AN: I'm back with a new story! This one has been sitting for awhile and I wasn't too sure if I was going to post this. Season two's ending left a bad impression in my mouth (I liked the ending but I felt nothing for the character deaths) and I got indecisive. Luckily that indecisiveness didn't last and I persevered little by little. I started this with just Trowa, then I added Duo, because, hey, I adore him, then it grew to Quatre, and finally Wufei had to be in there too! Heero Yuy may or may not show. I liked these four pilots because of their teamwork in the Eve's War, and I thought it would be great if they collaborated on another mission with stakes far greater than their own universe.

I enjoyed IBO's setting and loved the characters (but the setting could have been expanded more if they remained on Mars and included the Dorf colonies in season two). I love the characters' personal quirks and the subtle character development. I like the dysfunctional relationship between Mika and Orga, Orga's impulsiveness and dependency on Mika and vice versa, and Biscuit's character (he's my favorite). I like the use of gay and bisexual characters - which Gundam needs a lot more. What I didn't like was when a character was about to die, they get character development, which soon became very predictable and I rolled my eyes each time it happened. That didn't sit right with me. The Turbines needed more development, especially Azee! McGillis should have planned better. But the pros definitely outweighed the cons, and there's too many Seed/Wing stories and I wrote something new for a change. I'm okay with this chapter, but I hope those that do read it find more enjoyment in this. The title is subject to change. R&R.

Additional notes: Orga is a girl. It's a shocker, I know, but I wondered what it would be like for a girl to grow up in CGS in the company of boys and men and progress through sexism, possibly pedophilia, abuse and misogyny, friendship and romance. And also, there's too many boys! It's an extremely harsh world for children, boys and girls, and I wanted to see what happens. If you can't get past this, then oh well. I can't help you there. The Wing Gundams are the Katoki versions. I'm also using Post-Disaster Universe rules for weaponry - no beams if I can help it. There will be new antagonists and more expansion on Mars and the colonies. There will be relationships, but I'm not sure on who just yet.

Additional notes 1a: I love writing Duo! He's just a fun character to write and his expressions and dialogue are always interesting!

Plot: A rogue mission spirals out of control for Trowa, Quatre, Duo, and Wufei, sending the pilots and their Gundams to a new universe, where they encounter children who are not so unlike them and their past. Forming new relationships and setting new goals, these four pilots embark on a new adventure that will continually test their fortitude to survive in the Post-Disaster future. However, a new foe called Gjallarhorn rules with an iron fist and oppresses with an even greater reach than what OZ had ever done. The Gundam pilots and their new allies will have to battle them and come to some harsh conclusions on the state of the world and how, from their experience from their own timeline, to reform the world... if they can survive that is.

Chapter 1: Dawn

The circus was alive tonight! The white voluminous tent, festooned by gold and purple ribbon that adorned its frame in a celebratory circle, shimmering under the floodlights like liquid color bedazzled by the sun, and the roaming and crisscrossing searchlights, created an eclectic atmosphere of celebration, an allure of unbridled enthusiasm sparked by an evening fervor for the weekend. The searchlights dazzled the nighttime sky and acted as a beacon to draw throngs of boisterous weekenders, where bustling crowds were still, after a nearly two hour performance, crowding the entrance to the tent. The crowd soon grumbled and moaned their dismay when security closed off the entrance with a red rope barrier. The tent had exceeded full capacity, and the crowd soon dispersed within the city. Inside, the sitting attendees eagerly awaited the next performance that would send their imagination abound in restless excitement.

Backstage, sixteen-year-old Trowa Barton sat in ponderous silence on an equipment box, waiting patiently for his turn in the spotlight. His gloved hands were folded in his lap, fingers intertwined. He sat like a statue and nothing could move him besides the summoning of his role. Trowa had a face considered handsome, a white visage with ancestral ties to the European continent. His childish features were melting away into the man he would become in the future; and though he looked young, there was something off about the boy. Those that looked upon him, that really took the time to observe him, did not see him as a child, for the shelter of innocence, the naivety of the world from those of his age, could not be found. He had lost his innocence when he realized his value lay only in the fires of war - to be a perfect weapon for any organization, with fire in their hands and war in their metal and cruel hearts, he undertook and pledged his allegiance to.

Trowa was a boy of quiet disposition, whose dark forest green eyes bore a heavy if not critical gaze some would consider cold. His eyes manifested as a barrier that separated him from the world around him, the sea of leaves that hid the forest floor, it kept many at bay. To be caught in his gaze was for him to decode a person's true intentions. Nothing escaped from his eyes; everything was unraveled, analyzed and deconstructed. He could not afford anything – absolutely anything – to get past him. To get by him insured his own demise.

Trowa's emotions were dissembled behind a stoic mask he often portrayed publicly, offset by his colorful and flamboyant costume of a smiling clown. He wore a white mask that covered the right side of his face, with a purple star painted over the eye that dipped into the mask's smiling red lips, which seemed to smile and hint as if it knew an open secret: There were two sides to Trowa Barton, and the mask held those two sides at bay: the mysterious, zealous, no-named performer and the gentle and reserved boy.

Trowa's brown, unruly, cascading bangs fell onto his right side, stopping at his chin, hiding most of the mask; the back of his head remained short and neat, a remembrance, he kept, from his days on Earth in his childhood. He wore gold suspenders over his bare muscular chest that attached itself to ostentatious, green, balloon pants. The balloon pants for all its bagginess was quite light, constructed from the same cotton fabric of his previous pants when he had joined the traveling circus, a courtesy of Catherine Bloom, and he found they did not hinder or strain any movement. His new look gave him more freedom to define himself as a performer. It was a new, minimized look for the young clown, a less flamboyant and caricatured costume. Catherine had agreed. She had said his new look would attract many admirers to their shows. Observing the audience and their coos and screams when he entered the tent he could say she wasn't wrong in her assessment. He, like always, ignored their adulation, their adoring screams that rang in the air when he appeared, remaining sedulous to his art, a dedication born from a marriage of meticulousness and his love for the arts and humanities he had studied as a child.

Presently, Trowa's visible green eye remained fixed on the tent walls, transfixed not on the wall, but something past it, as he ignored the flashing lights and the fire-tempo of the carnival music blasting from the stadium speakers and vibrating his seat. Trowa's imminent performance was pushed to the back of his mind. It wasn't like it mattered, as he had already memorized the routine. He could perform the routine with his eyes closed if needed. It was trivial in comparison to the looming and existential threat facing him.

His mind dwelt on the future – a potentially dangerous future. Trowa thoughts' were engaged on a coming rendezvous with a personal friend to deal with imminent threats facing the Colonies and the Earth. He hadn't seen this friend in months, and he knew when he came, his position in the world would change dramatically.

The matter weighed on his conscious. Grave matters that unsettled the very foundations of his being, his present-day self. The more time elapsed, the more his persona unraveled. It was an identity crisis that had returned to haunt him, and he was sure, one day, to torture and murder him. The gravity of his situation was enormous, and it involved, from his inception as a Gundam pilot, the knowledge of Operation Meteor.

His friend had messaged Trowa a classified report from the Earth Sphere Unified Nation's Preventers, an intelligence agency formed to "prevent" any escalation of conflict, through the Gundam Circuit while he was touring in the sector with the circus troupe. Trowa had been scouring the Gundam Circuit that day, looking for any information on the state of the world, and who, in this age of peace and cooperation, would disrupt the new world order. Ever since Ralph Kurt's visit earlier in the year, he had been feeling uneasy, like the coming cold of night creeping on the skin, the threat couldn't be seen as of yet but it was felt intensely, hostilely.

The people of his past were resurfacing from the shadows. And the light, a light that continued to be tested, halting the expansion of the aggressive shadows, protecting peace, was dimming, fading a slow death to evanescence. Soon the shadows would usurp the light. It was only a matter of time. Time, which could not be prolonged, always came to ahead, holding no qualms for the state of the world or one's self. Time was a selfish lover, and it cared not for Trowa's relationships – he would have to extricate himself from them, for peace was a random time bomb in his life: no one knew when it would be set off or the destruction it would cause in his obliviousness. Trowa noticed the all-too-familiar patterns of the world receding from its current era - political lines were drawn, discontent of soldiers looking for a new battlefield, the return of weapons to establish power – the hanging threats that could ferment into something insidious. Trowa couldn't afford to dally any longer.

Space was in the midst of a great change.

During this change, the circus had come to space again, to colony X-30098, in the L-3 colony cluster. The manager had said, since the war's end, he wanted to spread some cheer to the Colonies. Trowa had silently agreed, and, relieved, he was happy returning home to his adopted region. Space had never been so open and warm. The Colonies were once again flowering with joy and excitement, where the war had left them bereft and afraid as hope, back then, was a dream, frozen by the hands of death, oppression, rebellion, war and revolution. Peace was an afterthought last year. Now, people, the Colonies' denizens, took to this new freedom, this newborn peace, like bees to pollen. This attraction was intoxicating and so very welcoming. The Colonies were free.

From this sense of freedom came the thrill of entertainment. Tonight, the circus troupe had attracted a large turnout, more so than last year. The people were delighted by their appearance, tickets sold out in hours, and crowds squished together, tightly packed, just to see the show. Trowa could hear the crowd gasp and cheer, their raucous applause reverberating like echoes in a cave. He knew the manager, Arthur Vitt, was nearly closing the show for the night; all that was left was his last performance on the tightrope, a job that came naturally to him: Trowa had always walked a thin line between life and death – for death was a constant companion, because his past, his childhood, was born – and bred – for the battlefield. Trowa had found it amusing, for the tightrope became, in a way, a lifeline of what he was, and an internal separation between his life of war and peace – which both could be housed together in an internal struggle for supremacy. Peace was winning, but barely.

"We got a performance for you tonight!" the manager announced, breaking Trowa out of his reverie.

Trowa stood and made his way to the opening flap. He stood at the entrance readying his mind and his body for the performance. The tent was pitch-black except a lone stray light illuminating the manager in the middle of the floor. The crowd was nothing but amorphous silhouettes moving back and forth, their cellphones alight in the dark, like an undulating sea reflecting stars. The crowd quieted but unintelligible whispers steadily raised the volume until it was, once again, uncontrollable. The anticipation was thick and heavy and seemed to make the crowd more riled, more vocal as if a contagious pathogen had spread, seizing the audience one by one, and turning their quiet anticipation into sedentary pandemonium; whistles and hoots and the drumming of stomps resounded loudly, thunderously, in restless anticipation, for the closing performance was at hand.

"Please give another round of applause for Trowa Barton, our rising star performer!"

That was his cue. The drum roll began its nightly, violent ritual. Trowa somersaulted and flipped to the center of the stage, the drums growing louder and louder, driving harder and faster, like booming marching footsteps walking in unison, after each acrobatic technique. He stopped and landed after a front double tuck facing the audience, and the drums, reaching its crescendo, crashed into silence. The spotlight found him, and he bowed graciously to his audience, welcoming them to the finale. The crowd roared before him, hooting and cheering so loud that his eardrums trembled. He could feel their enthusiasm, the vibrations booming in the air, raising his fine hair on his skin like an electrical current. It was music to his ears.

The tent brightened in light, and Trowa, using his extraordinarily powerful legs, jumped, and freely flipped in the air. He felt as light as a feather, twirling and spinning, as if the wind had swept up the feather in a furious gust. Trowa landed with the grace of a ballet dancer, on a taut tightrope high above the ground, the rope bouncing lightly under his feet. The audience, sitting in bleachers surrounding the stage, looked like blurs, but their cheers of elation met him in the air, ringing around him, filling the whole tent in sound.

Tonight was something different. Tonight, Trowa had asked for something new, a personal finale of sorts. It would be his last performance for a while. He wanted the crowd to remember this feeling, this sense of joy that emanated from their performances. Trowa wanted them spellbound, captivated by an otherworldly performance. He sought to fill their minds with awe, leaving them insatiable.

He had suggested the use of pyrotechnics on the safety net. Catherine had marveled at the idea, he remembered her gray eyes shined brightly at the challenge, the captivation of such a performance could only bring greater acclaim to their troupe. The manager wasn't sure, as he kept a careful eye on any suggestion Trowa made, learning from past experiences the boy's performances were extremely dangerous, as if Trowa liked teetering on the edges of life and death. Trowa could not blame him; he had put them in harm's way when he used Heavyarms to destroy a local Organization of the Zodiac (OZ) base during a performance. He doubted Arthur would ever forget neither the incident nor the cost of Trowa's decision.

However, Trowa and Catherine convinced the manager to his side. Trowa knew how to provoke a reaction from the crowd, and the manager couldn't ignore Catherine. Catherine was the assistant-manager, so her words held indubitable weight, and she was bit more lenient of Trowa's transgressions.

"Let's light things up!" the manager cried. He turned to Catherine, motioning an arm to her, his face full of explosive excitement though his eyes betrayed a deep-seated fear. "Ms. Catherine Bloom, please, if you will do us the honor and set the net ablaze!"

Below him, Catherine walked to the net, torch in hand. She held the flame under the net and it licked the air greedily until it caught the taste of the safety net and engulfed it quickly. The audience gasped in fright, fearing his life was in danger. The fire rose and rose, flickering and spitting, dancing dangerously below him. It wanted to devour him, writhing hungrily, angrily. The flames, amid their bellicose dance, felt familiar, as if they were hissing to him in a language of upheaval and violence that he knew, regrettably, all-too-well.

The battlefield flashed in Trowa's mind.

All too soon Trowa's cacophonous past drowned out the audience as he stared at the fire, entranced by its writhing violence. He froze. He soon felt the sensation of tightness, like being squeezed through a tube. The audience's voices became indistinct and distant echoes at the cusp of his mind until he was, quite vividly, thrown into his war-ravaged past.

Vivid sequences of his battles exploded in his mind anachronistically. Trowa saw the titanic fires raging over demolished bases, the mortal cries of dying men and women, the thunderous explosions of mobile suits that glittered chillingly all around him, shredded and burned metal strewn over fortifications in heaps like ruins of an old age, the smell of rotting and smoldering corpses blackened and unrecognizable; the fusillade of Heavyarms's Gatling guns roaring at enemies, their empty clips ringing, ringing, ringing in melodious dissonance, each bullet piercing with deadly precision, perforating his enemies' metal bodies as if they were paper; the billowing smoke from the wreckage that blotted and dyed the sky an ominous and ugly black, that seemed to consume the very world, descending the world into turbulent chaos; desperation and redundancy of a freedom fighter without a cause. It all crashed within him violently.

"What will our noble clown do?" echoed the manager from his podium, his tone masked in fright, which the crowd ate up, their whispers transforming into clamoring incoherence. The manager looked between him and the crowd, puzzled and worried, for Trowa, unbeknownst to the audience, hesitated. Catherine had her hand over her mouth; her grey eyes were wide and she looked on in stunned silence.

The act had become real.

The past shattered into pieces around Trowa, the shards reflecting his life-defining moments ebbed into the darkness that was clearing around him. The manager's voice had awakened Trowa from his trauma-induced dream. Trowa blinked, remembering where he was, high atop the swaying rope, in the middle of a performance. Panic came like a flood, pouring into every fiber of his being. He could feel his heart racing, his fingers fidgeting as if he was back in Heavyarms's cockpit, seeking the trigger of his joystick, the burning need to pull and eradicate all enemies with mechanical efficiency. Trowa forced himself to remain calm, to stop his erratic heartbeats that now came to his ears, blocking all but the sound of his heart's maddening plea to be heard and assuaged. He breathed a long sigh, fighting to compose himself, fighting not to betray himself to thousands of people.

When his body stilled, and he could feel the tension of his muscles alleviate, Trowa re-centered his gaze to the end of the tightrope. That was strange, he thought, perplexed by the sudden recalling of his terrifying memories. Does my past still torment me, like a child that never surmounts their phobia, triggered by the briefest of instances? Do the fires of war and steel still call to me, my bloody baptism as a soldier?

Trowa had never been so consumed by his past during a performance. It frightened and unnerved him. He had thought he had reconciled with his past by staying with the circus troupe and Catherine. Catherine gave him hope. She gave him a home to return to. That should have settled his turbulent mind… or so Trowa thought. He narrowed his green eye and replaced his building worry with focus. He would cross that bridge at a later time. Right now, the performance must go on.

Trowa treaded across the rope, ignoring the fire roaring below him and the smattering noise of the audience. The crowd, now, calming, returned to his performance, many standing up to see if the boy would fall. He did not. He never did. He stopped near-halfway to the middle and turned his back. He performed two back handsprings slowly, his legs taut, stretching, one after another until he reached the middle. He paused as the amazed crowd cheered. He front flipped, feeling his body rotate, his head dipping, and grabbed the rope in a one-handed handstand, his free hand outstretched to the crowd as if to invite them to join his suicidal performance. Of course, none would willingly indulge or take such an invitation. To join Trowa would mean bearing the heaviness of the world and the Colonies, and facing a harsher reality where tragedy made home and the terror of death, as omnipresent as an imperceptible light breeze kissing one's skin, shadowed one's every move. To take his hand was to, at bottom, willingly acquiesce one's humanity, and to erase and replace it, as a blank slate, into a weapon.

Finishing his last acrobatic trick, he jumped down into the center. The fire raged closer. Trowa felt the intense heat, its hot breath on his face, briefly, smothering, and landed next to the burning contraption. It was quickly extinguished, leaving fingers of smoke rising in the air like smoldering battlefields. He paused, waiting, waiting under the heavy and stunned silence of the crowd; their awe-open mouths and bated breaths filled the silence of the applause. A lonely drop of sweat trickled down his forehead, winding its way along the landscape of his face. He bowed to his audience, and they drowned him in applause, muting the manager's ecstatic voice.

A hand squeezed his right shoulder. His visible green eye followed the hand to Catherine's beautiful face, her short, brown, curly hair glowing in the light. She looked radiant, surrounded by light as if dressed in its brilliance, compounded with the crowd's adulation. She smiled beautifully, but her smile did not reach her large eyes. Catherine's eyes, gray circular mirrors that reflected Trowa, told him everything about his performance. Trowa's face remained blank, and he moved his eyes away from her, closing them in shame.

Shortly thereafter, Trowa was packing his duffle bag. He had on a blue long-sleeved turtleneck, fitting his muscular form, jeans and blue boots. He was in his room, in the colony hotel Stardust. The room was modest: a single queen-sized bed rested against a bland beige wall, two armchairs sat by the open window, where the pulled back purple curtains overlooked an immense view of the bustling city, a closet and a bathroom. The television hanging from the wall was on, the anchor's voice competing against the indistinguishable noise of the outside world. From what Trowa could hear from the television, the anchor reported that a high and abnormal concentration of solar flares would be hitting Mars in a few weeks, due to the active (and explosive) sunspots caused by an irregular internal reaction. The anchor said it would be the strongest yet since recorded history.

The circus troupe was staying at the hotel for the remainder of the week before they travelled to the next colony. The demand was enormous and they couldn't pass on an opportunity like this. Trowa, on the other hand, was leaving. The report he had received from the Gundam Circuit came flooding into his head. His worry returned, saturating his current thoughts.

The Preventer report stated that the Barton Foundation was proliferating weapons in the orbit of Mars on a resource satellite and at many Lagrange points hidden in the colony clusters. Each was an independent site under the guise of the Foundation's business and industries – proliferation of arms, capital, labor and soldiers. The report was stirring and it made Trowa uneasy about at how quickly the Foundation was moving. He knew the peace obtained by the Gundam pilots during the war, as fragile as it was, could unravel and collapse, especially with Dekim Barton as the catalyst.

Dekim was making his move, and Trowa knew how important it was to stop him. Dekim Barton, the creator of Operation Meteor, would be after his head. He would permanently silence Trowa through public execution, as a reminder – and a warning – for dissenters, for murderers and coconspirators against him, his reign, and his family. Absolute fealty to the Barton Foundation was demanded; deference, as always, to Dekim's will, was priority. Dekim inspired loyalty, and it was no small feat he had so many revolutionaries pledging themselves to him and his cause. He had the power and charisma to achieve his goals.

Trowa, in an act to counter Operation Meteor's true objective, had taken the name of his son and acted out missions as the replacement for the original Trowa Barton. However, he was caught before the operation at Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia; the flow of arms to Heavyarms had ceased at the realization he was a fake. Fortunately, he had no more trouble with the Barton Foundation until Ralph Kurt found him on Earth, demanding Heavyarms for the remnants of the White Fang and a certain man lurking behind the curtain, pulling the strings. Trowa was positive Dekim was that man, the enigmatic puppet master moving in the shadows, his hands were pushing and pulling anyone he could manipulate.

Dekim was a man born from the shadows, and was simply biding his time before his grand entrance into the light, where he would bring a reckoning of catastrophe and authoritarianism. Trowa knew this with certainty. Indeed Dekim's son often spoke of his father's grand ambitions for conquest of space and Earth, and Trowa couldn't find fault that the son was as egotistical and power-hungry as the father. The original Barton wanted Earth to genuflect to the ideals and wishes of the Barton family. Nothing could satiate that desire; revenge for the assassinated and venerated politician Heero Yuy or peace for the Colonies could not make an impact.

And it seemed Dekim was still defiant, even after peace had come to the Colonies. Trowa needed to act quickly before Dekim amassed more weapons. He had a feeling Dekim wouldn't stop until he conquered space and Earth. Revenge drove the old man's violent lusts and it would be revenge that would endanger him and the people close to his heart.

Dekim was a merciless man and betrayal wasn't so easily forgiven; his death would be immediate and Heavyarms would be his possession once again, to subjugate the Earth as it was intended to. Mercy was only in Dekim's vocabulary if one would be a pawn in his grand scheme. Trowa would take any method to undermine and subvert Dekim, even if it meant he had to play the pawn. He would make sure, when the chance presented itself, to assassinate Dekim. He would continue to kill again to shelter others from the throes of violence and bloodshed.

Trowa breathed a sighed, turning his thoughts on assassination aside, and restarted packing when he heard a soft rapping on his door. Quickly, he turned off the television and opened the door. He was greeted by Catherine's smiling face. However, her expression was downcast. Her smile was forced, and sadness wafted off of her like a depressing and slow mist, a sadness he could feel scream at his being.

"Catherine," acknowledged Trowa softly.

"Do you mind if we talk for a bit," she said, nervously wringing her hands. She bit her lip, a nervous or anxious reaction he had noticed when trouble dwelled in those gray irises.

Trowa nodded, and she walked in and sat on the red covers of the bed. Trowa closed the door and leaned against it, watching her through his heavy lashes. Catherine was out of her circus costume, wearing a yellow tank top that revealed her pale white skin and her ample cleavage and was tucked into a pair of hip-hugging jeans. She was svelte with healthy definition in her arms - from years as a knife-thrower and other acrobatic positions - and tall. She smiled wanly at him, a smile that made his heart clench, as her hands gripped the covers in a restless cause to handle her nervousness.

Her nervousness won.

Catherine was afraid to speak. Her eyes said it the most: they were large and red and unshed tears, that were going brighter by the minute, threatened to spill over a track of stained skin; and Trowa, then, knew, she had been crying just before she came in.

Trowa was the first to speak. "I'll return. You don't need to worry, Catherine."

"Your foresight is always amazing, Trowa. It's kind of scary."

Catherine sighed, looking down at her lap. Her eyes seemed to be staring at nothing and everything. Sad gray eyes, finally, found Trowa's green. "It feels like I've just had you back with me, and now you're going away again. Off to fight. You always seem to be slipping through my fingers, each time going further and further away. You know, you're like the stars sometimes, like, you're out of my reach even though I know you're there. Even in front me.

"One day, I'm afraid, I… I'm going to realize that you'll be gone for good – and there won't be anything I can do to stop you!" Her voice had taken a somber tone, slightly cracking at the end. Pain, which tormented her in waves, echoed in her words. Trowa could feel her ache at his decisions to involve himself in battle. It was pain he was familiar with from Catherine; it was a raw pain he knew he could never truly assuage.

Trowa remained silent, choosing to listen and watch. He knew his sudden departures hurt Catherine. She may not have expressed it often, but he could see it in her eyes, feel it in his very bones. But he had to go! His past was a nonnegotiable matter, a bloody past that refused to remain buried, and it would be soon that they would target the people he held most dear - Catherine and the circus troupe, his adopted family – as leverage for Heavyarms. He wouldn't let harm come to them, he would combat and obliterate them if they so much as touched them. He would sacrifice his life to do so. They deserved peace far more than anyone else, more than himself, a destroyer who takes life to become alive in the wreckage of his foes and near-death experiences.

Catherine knew what Trowa was going to do. She knew he was going to fight and, though she understood, she completely hated it. She absolutely loathed the idea of fighting and war. She had always hated war. It was a constant torment, and it rose in her every time she looked at him when his mind drifted far away, subconsciously latching onto memories he wanted to forget but couldn't, to disturbing memories that lingered quietly in the background of his thoughts. She was always watching him, and Trowa knew. Sometimes he tried to reassure her; oftentimes he would remain silent. She offered to listen to Trowa if his thoughts strayed to memories soaked in war but he could never tell her; those memories, those regrets, those alone were for him to bear and endure until he became nothing. He could not sully her already fragile heart with his deeds of destruction. Most times recalling his past was unbearably ineffable to put into words, to speak, only for his words to be reduced to a crying and deafening, an abject and aggrieved silence. It was best to say nothing and move forward.

Catherine had told Trowa after he tried to commit suicide by nearly self-destructing his Gundam (he had received a tearful admonishment), when she was very young, of how her parents and her baby brother, Triton, were killed fleeing a UESA air raid. There was no sudden alarm or evacuation drill, the UESA had swept in because of reports of civilians harboring wounded mercenaries, bombing all indiscriminately. She was left an orphan, haunted by the staccatos and the crescendos of gunfire, the earth turning to fire and smoke, quaking like a reckoning, which left an indelible mark on her psyche. She just wanted peace for herself and her circus family – and Trowa, now, was a part of her family, the surrogate brother that she never had growing up. She gave him a home, a place he could return, a place where he didn't have to be heartless, where he didn't have to fight to survive, and she accepted him without question. She gave Trowa a new chapter to life, but that chapter was slowly coming to an end all-too-quickly, the pages burning away, leaving embers that could blaze again and consume his life's story.

"It's something I must do," Trowa found himself saying. Catherine had to understand from his position he couldn't afford to leave them in danger, like when OZ captured them during the prelude to the Eve's War. He had nearly lost them to a madman's war to end all wars and the insanity of OZ's Space Force.

"I know." Catherine looked up to him. Her gray eyes were bright. "I just… I just wish that you didn't. It's not going to bring you peace. I can see it, Trowa, especially after today's performance! Seeing you hesitate on the tightrope! Trowa" – Trowa's eyes narrowed, and his gaze bore, unflinchingly, into Catherine – "you never hesitate!

"I was afraid you'd fall. Your eyes back then look so haunted, so engrossed, like you were dreaming. It reminded me of when you lost your memories. You looked like a lost and scared child when I found you. Do you even know how long you were up there?!"

Receiving Trowa's silence as an answer, Catherine attacked, her eyes burning into him. "Three minutes! You were up there, motionless, for three damn minutes!"

To Trowa, being stuck inside his head, watching his memories, felt like forever. Time did not exist in his nightmare. Three minutes felt short in comparison to what he'd been through. But he knew on the battlefield, those three minutes of inactivity was death. He internally frowned. The battlefield, as it seemed, would not let Trowa forget.

"Do you not know how frightened I was for you, Trowa? Even the manager was scared! We thought we might have to stop the show!

"Don't you see," Catherine continued, her voice becoming stronger and passionate, "To do this will destroy you! Trowa, you can't -!"

"It was a moment of hesitation, Catherine," Trowa interrupted, his voice leaving no room for argument, "nothing more. I was lax. It won't happen again."

Catherine opened her mouth as if to say more, but Trowa's leveled gaze bore through her, silencing her voice. She looked down; her lips twisted into a long frown, trembling, then she bit her lip to calm herself. Catherine knew swaying Trowa's mind or his position was like moving a mountain. She had to rely that he knew what he was getting himself into, because Trowa, as always, shouldered the heavy burdens of the Colonies and Earth. He chose to bear this terrible burden so the colony citizens' wouldn't have to, and Trowa knew his heavy burden pained her so.

"However," – Trowa's eyes softened, and he smiled - "it will relieve me to know that you're safe," said Trowa, his voice softer as if to melt her fear away, "big sis." He walked to her and gently placed a hand on her shoulder.

"You big lug, you called me big sis." Catherine's eyes found his and she smiled brightly. "I could just hug you for that." And she did. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she pressed into his hard frame in a warm embrace. The fragrance of her perfume and shampoo, an enticing, flowery scent of convallaria, flowed into his nose. The fragrance was, strangely, like her soothing hugs.

"Promise me you'll come back, Trowa," she said, her voice muffled by his neck. He could feel her moist, shuddering breaths, her body trembling against him, and a wetness, which he was certain, were her tears drenching his collar.

"Catherine, I…" Trowa tried to respond but the words were trapped by his misgivings. His stomach tightened like tangled coils trying to unwind. All missions held a strong probability of death; that was an inevitable truth, and accepting them was the fact of his life. Tomorrow was not promised. To be a Gundam pilot meant facing death (whether by one's own hand or another's) and embracing it as a last option when all else fails. Death was an eternal companion; it never slept, just merely waited for the opportune moment to take one into darkness.

"Promise me!" she implored vehemently, tightening her arms around his neck. Trowa could feel her arms trembling; so overcome of her sorrow, she gripped tighter as if to permanently entrap him in this room, to still space and time.

Trowa was silent for a moment, feeling the turmoil of his decision. The coils in his stomach loosened. He relented, closing his green eyes and holding her a bit tighter, as if to persuade himself what he was about to say was the truth. "Okay. I promise."

"Good." She eased her grip and held his shoulders, clenching his shirt, a watery smile on her face. "Because if you didn't, I promise you I'll hunt you down whether in heaven or hell, and I'll give you a piece of my mind! You're a brother to me, Trowa. I can't—won't lose you, too. Not like my friends. Not like my parents and brother. If you were gone I-I don't know what I'd do. It's too excruciating to think about it."

She sighed, lowering her hands down the length of his arms to his hands, holding them. "However," she said, looking up, finally noticing him, his steps into adulthood, "you're grown up – you're making your own decisions. You have the power to define your life. Whatever choices you make, make sure your heart is in it, okay? I don't want you… I don't want you… you know…" her voice suddenly breaking.

Trowa nodded, touched by Catherine's candor and heart. Like a reservoir, Catherine's warmth filled him, easing any anxiety niggling at the corners of his mind. The growing fondness he had for her was overwhelming, and, strangely enough, exhilarating. It was a nice and soothing feeling that enveloped him in warmth and a pleasant peace. It was a feeling that made him want to protect her.

For a long moment they stared at each other, two people wishing time would spare them its unending ticking of life and leave them together to live as a family once more. Trowa seared her into mind: her tearful gray eyes, her curly brown hair, her full smile and red, tearstained cheeks. He wanted to remember her like this, to remember a person special to him that he had grown fond of. Her eyes again brimmed and overflowed with tears, and he gently brushed them away, as if to sweep all her worries away with a simple motion. He caressed her shoulders, while comforting her with a warm and gentle smile only reserved for her. She returned his smile with a watery one of her own.

Their moment came as swiftly as it ended when a loud rap sounded from the door. It was impatient, like the beckoned call of fate or destiny, telling him their brief time had ended, and the future, a ceaseless imminence, always looking over one's shoulder, had come. Pound, pound, pound! The knocks demanded to be answered, and Trowa reluctantly knew he could not refuse them. He could not run away from fate.

"My ride is here," Trowa said, reluctantly leaving Catherine, his smile dissolving into his habitual stoicism. He opened the door, and a young man, slightly shorter than he, was at the entrance. The youth's head was down and a black cap covered his face. Unrestrained and unruly brown bangs sprung from beneath his cap like untamed weeds, hovering over his face in disarray. He wore a red zippered-turtleneck under a black leather jacket with its sleeves rolled up, showing his bare arms, and black pants accompanied with brown boots.

He raised his head up, revealing tinted black sunglasses and a cheeky grin set on his boyishly white features.

"Knock, knock, knock! The Shinigami, Duo Maxwell, has arrived! No extra fees will be needed for this house call, unless you're payin' for the cab? So, are we ready buddy? Another dance with death is waiting, and she's an impatient partner." The young man peeked inside the room, spotting a disheartened Catherine. "Hey, I see ya got someone in there. I'll give ya a few."

"No," responded Trowa, "I'm ready."

"Ya sure?" the teen asked hesitantly, cocking his head to the side, his sunglasses dipping, showing his concerned cobalt blue eyes. His eyes switched from Trowa to Catherine briefly, understanding shining in them when he returned his eyes back on Trowa. Trowa nodded and went to gather his duffle bag. Catherine had the bag in her hand and gave it to him. She also gave in him another big hug.

"Be safe, Trowa," she breathed, and then she looked over his shoulder to the boy in the doorway, glaring. Duo raised a curious eyebrow in response. He seemed unsure as to why Catherine had singled him out in this farewell moment. But Trowa knew. Catherine's protective instincts kicked in, and Duo was in line of her caring ire.

"You make sure Trowa doesn't do anything reckless. I already had one guy poisoning his mind, I don't need another!"

"What?" Duo questioned, turning to Trowa, a quizzical smile on his face. "Is there somethin' I'm missing here? I'm not one to brainwash another, so who was the last chump you had with you?"

Trowa gave a small smile. He could not forget the lashing Catherine had given that day. "She's referring to Heero, Duo."

As if a light bulb went off in his head, Duo chuckled, shaking his head, his braided hip-length hair swaying at his waist. The thought of Heero humored the boy as his chuckle erupted into full-blown laughter. "Don't I know it? I have a hard time figuring that guy out, too. Sometimes I don't think he uses his head too much, either. Those quiet ones are the ones ya have to look out for the most! You'll never know what half-baked plans come to mind when they're in the heat of the moment. Or flashy surprises for that matter, too. And they're always overdoing it in the grandest, flashiest ways possible. Unbelievable! Always starting or leaving the party with an emphatic bang. I swear - to make up for their silent personalities, their actions have to be that much louder. Gonna get us all killed one day."

"Just make sure Trowa uses his," she instructed, walking Trowa to the door. Catherine reached as if to restrain Trowa, to pull him back to her, her hand lingering over his shoulder, but the moment passed and it fell quietly, and reluctantly, to her side.

"You can count on it," Duo replied, moving through the hallway. "We'll catch ya later, Cathy." He threw a wave and flashed a grin.

Trowa moved to follow him. "You be safe, Trowa," Catherine called. Trowa turned his head back and nodded, then continued after Duo.

The two left Catherine at the doorway, her eyes shining, and tears falling softly down her cheeks.

The two made their way down to the hotel lobby and outside, where they were met by the city's iridescent lights. They sparkled colorfully, an array of festivity, acting as the conduit to the colony's night life, the metal jungle's eyes in this urban setting. Skyscrapers rose from darkness and congregated in dominance at city corners, their tall silhouettes outlined by the night lights and their own incandescent glow - their myriad of window panes alight in fire, shined like lighthouses, like the guiding stars, calling them to haven – trying to outdo the other for light supremacy, in space where the stars burned more fiercely. Cars and buses ran down the streets, and the people of the colony ambled in the streets, at parks, at corners, in cafes, as the nighttime rhythm energized the city. Making their way out of the lobby and into the night, the duo held a cab in front of the hotel and it took them to the spaceport.

They left the cab and made their way inside. A left and right and left and another left, showing security their identification, they reached their private shuttle that was berthed outside the colony. Leading to the ship were stairs rising to an elevated gangway. They made their way up and through the gangway, stopping at the entrance.

"I'll start the preparatory work, buddy! Your Gundam's inside the cargo bay ready for ya. Its ammo is replenished and Howard added an extra weapon, somethin' I think you'll enjoy. The old coot must've been bored stiff on the moon," Duo said with a laugh. "Talk about crazy hobbies. But I guess that beats doing nothing. I know he rather be lulled by the ocean waves than the barren craters of the moon. Can't really call that a vacation paradise, ya know? Nothin' to do with himself," Duo paused, and his eyes shined at a new thought. He flashed a naughty smirk and he leaned in conspiratorially. "Well, I could be wrong about that.

"Check it out!" he encouraged, shooing Trowa away, chuckling. "Ya might even get a few surprises."

"Appreciate it, Duo."

They both entered the shuttle; Duo headed towards the flight deck and Trowa made his way to the cargo bay. The swish of the sliding door revealed, under dim yellow light, what he was looking for. In the cavernous bay, Trowa found his Gundam inside. His Gundam, XXXG-01H2 Gundam Heavyarms Kai, sat in the back against the wall, like a dozing metal giant. He jumped into zero gravity, floating over to his suit to get a greater inspection of its new updates.

"We meet again, Heavyarms," whispered Trowa, his eyes appraising the cold machine.

The updated blue-and green-striped Gundam was still terrifying as ever. Though immobile the machine radiated pure cold stoicism; which, ironically, its original color – a garish orange, red, and white – was so conspicuous that OZ soldiers could see it a mile away – and still die before they even said: "It's a Gundam!" The color, suggested by the original Trowa Barton, was an eyesore. He wanted to be seen as a heroic warrior from the colonies, and it was revealed in Heavyarms's paintjob. The mechanics and technicians disagreed, articulating the Gundam would only be more vulnerable to attacks if seen from aerial view. They argued for a more neutral color palette – it was hard enough already to hide a 16 meter robot - but Barton would hear none of it. In his righteous anger, he threatened to fire them if they disobeyed.

The garish and bold colors continued to pose a problem for Trowa during Operation Meteor. He had to painstakingly find new ways and methods to keep Heavyarms as indiscreet as possible – whether covering the machine with brown tarp, hiding it inside sea or air transports, or stowing it underneath the ground inside tunnels and waterways. Any portion left uncovered would result in obtrusive questions and attention he'd rather avoid. Taking Heavyarms into space, during OZ's diplomatic talks with the colony leaders, would have caused an entirely new set of problems: he would have stood out.

During the Eve's War, Trowa had had enough of the original colors, and when the opportunity presented itself aboard the Peacemillion by one of Howard's engineers, he took it unabashedly. He had changed the colors to blue and dark green. Blue and green were not heroic colors; they were natural and neutral, easier on the eyes, and evoked a contemplative dignity, in all of Heavyarms's robust weaponry and size.

Heavyarms personified a walking tank, and strove to annihilate all on the battlefield in a rain of bullets and smoke. It was a formidable weapon, a tool for mass destruction, exemplifying overwhelming firepower. However, Trowa saw it as an emblem of freedom, a martyr for revolution and a necessary tool for times of war. Heavyarms personified the world's negatives and positives, the Colonies' and the Earth's hope and salvation. He could say, in a way, Heavyarms also served as a guide. Together, the two, machine and human, worked in coexistence, contributing to the betterment of the individual... and even the destruction of the world and their selves.

Trowa was quite fond of Heavyarms since its creation in the L-3 Colony Cluster. The Barton Foundation recruited all that they could – those that wanted revenge and those that sought freedom from the Earth Alliance's tyranny (all a small minority of the L-3 population) – and he rose to answer that call, trying, in a world that crushed the dreams of children, that stole their childhood and warped them into tools of war, to find a place to belong.

Trowa had, initially, worked on its predecessor, the XXXG-01H Gundam Heavyarms, as one of the many mechanics for Operation Meteor alongside the head chief engineer, Doktor S. He had memorized every detail of Heavyarms, all its internal and external components and circuitry, weaponry, and facilitated the magnetic coating to the joints. It was a job he enjoyed, because he was good at it.

Trowa had found comfort in mobile suits, constructing and fixing them more so than connecting with people, as machines were disassociated from emotions and human impulses; they were just tools – like him: they were disposable. Still, the construction and maintenance of Heavyarms left an impression on the youth, an attachment he took pleasure in completing for Operation M and then employing, eventually, in a violent manner against the tyranny of OZ and the UESA.

Heavyarms watched Trowa in the tremendous silence and cold, the dim yellow lighting splashed over the armor, gleaming along its armaments in grim resplendence, shadowing its eyes and its half-covered mask. The machine looked intimidating, but Trowa was not frightened; he was more curious, more accustomed to the hulking suit. Trowa stared into its visible dark green eye, which appeared like a fathomless black mirror. Heavyarms, silently, was evaluating him once again, and though the mask was smiling, he was sure the mobile suit was frowning (if it could). He was back in the game of death, ready to soak his hands in the blood of his foes, his former comrades of Operation M and his previous enemies.

His green eyes started at the top of Heavyarms.

At the head, one rectangular eye lurked under its overhanging head frame, the other was covered by a mask, a larger facsimile of Trowa's own costume. Trowa liked the new aesthetic, however, he wondered if the mechanics accounted for blocking a main camera. If not he would have to manually redistribute and divert power to his other cameras to get a better picture. Piloting a mobile suit with a missing camera, though it doesn't often happen, was not something Trowa particularly enjoyed; it was a hassle, and he wanted to avoid anything obstructing his line of sight.

A golden camera was situated atop the head, above the gold v-fin crest. On both sides of the head, two antennas sprung from the ears like whiskers. A blue pharaoh-like red beard jutted from the chin. Head mounted Vulcan guns were parallel on the sides of the face. The machine's shoulders, forearms, and chest were coated in blue paint. Green stripes, like a tiger, were painted in the grooves of the blue armor – which also housed and marked the ballistic weaponry.

Two triumphant golden horns rose and curved on the machine's shoulders. Two machine cannons were mounted on the clavicles; in the shoulders and the side skirts, a total of fifty-two micro missiles lay dormant; two-by-twenty-two homing missiles were located on its smoky-colored legs in two containers and inside the front skirts. Heavyarms had four, smaller, Gatling guns and two more machine cannons inside its chest cavity; two Gundanium knives on its back skirts; on a rack, above the four-sectioned verniers, contained a new bazooka (left) and a long, an extra double-barrel Gatling Gun (right); the other was gripped in its left manipulator. Behind its right arm, extending to the elbow joint, a large Gundanium army knife, barely concealed, protruded. Heavyarms looked combat ready, like a mythological war god or demon dressed in potential for extreme bloodshed. The suit was emblematic of the times.

Trowa turned to the floor and his eyes widened, surprise flickering in his green irises. The world was full of surprises if these pilots had joined their mission. The need must have been great.

So these are Duo's surprises.

He smiled, his eyes taking in the mobile suit against the left wall, Sandrock's newest incarnation, the XXXG-01SR2 Gundam Sandrock Kai.

The Gundam was fortified in armor, boasting a strong defense. Every Gundam was plated in Gundanium, although, in Sandrock's case, it was different. Sandrock was reinforced to withstand heavy fire when engaged in close-quarter combat. An all-purpose suit, one of its main components was for desert terrain, to weather the extreme environment, against OZ and the ESUA. Trowa assumed that Sandrock's chief engineer, Instructor H, designed the suit as a command unit for a larger whole in Operation Meteor. The engineer must have had foresight that the Gundams and the Maganac Corps would fight together, and knowing Sandrock's pilot, would delegate strategy and tactics to its pilot.

The Gundam sported a new color scheme. Instead of its customary black and yellow, blue covered its robust chest frame while red highlighted its pectoral vents. Sandrock's segmented, pentagonal-plated shoulders and legs were a smoky gray as if bathed in years of smoke. The head, which was a-near facsimile to its predecessor, the OZ-00MS Tallgeese, had an air of nobility, an elegance of an early nineteenth-century soldier or a Roman commander's galea. The blue helmet framed the face and Sandrock had the ubiquitous, elongated, red chin. Atop the helmet the emblematic red-crested v-fin shined majestically, its golden horns striking and proud. From the crown to the helmet's back was a red, solid, plume.

As an all-purpose suit, Sandrock was equipped with versatile weapons to adapt to whatever situation presented itself – space, desert, urban, forest, and support – it came prepared. Behind its back was a backpack that stored its close combat weapons, the heat shotels. Like Heavyarms's knife, the shotels were made of Gundanium and as long as its 16.5m body. They had the power to generate heat to easier bifurcate opponents. As of this moment, they were stored upside down on its backpack, above its four vernier engines. Below the engines, on the back skirt, was a black machine gun for mid-range combat.

On its left arm, was a snake-eyed shield, featuring two claws as "fangs", and two shield flashers as its "eyes." The shield acted, also, as an offensive weapon as this arm-mounted crushing weapon was formed by combining Sandrock's shield, backpack, and heat shotels. It could capture an enemy mobile suit in-between the shotels, like a crustacean's pincer grasping at prey, and crush them in half.

Sandrock watched Trowa, like a commander to a subordinate, its green eyes keen and attentive. He remembered his first encounter with the regal suit at the Corsica Alliance Munitions Base and Factory last year, where his mission was to eliminate OZ's flow of mobile suits with the Alliance forces, which seemed like ages ago. The world had been very different back then. He had been very different back then.

Trowa had come to destroy the base using Heavyarms to its fullest extent – outrageously armed to obliterate all enemies and fortifications. Waves upon waves of enemy aircrafts and tanks, ground-based fighter mobile suits – OZ-06MS Leos and OZ-07MS Tralgos – beset him on all sides. However, Commander Bonaparte was incompetent; he had underestimated Heavyarms's potential for devastation, and it had cost him the lives of most of his soldiers. But the situation, which he thought was in his hands, turned. The Specials – an OZ elite force of Special Forces soldiers within the Alliance Military – entered the fray in their OZ-07AMS Aries.

Trowa was able to destroy some of their suits but he ran out of ammunition. He resorted to his knife, destroying two but the rest were more resourceful as they surrounded him, imminent death in their glittering beam rifles aimed at him. As an Aries was about to fire a critical shot, he was saved by Sandrock and the Maganac Corps (A forty-man private of Arab mobile suit pilots) and their incursion to destroy the base. Trowa assumed they were part of the Barton Foundation and he battled Sandrock in a one-on-one duel that ended in a draw.

His eyes glided to the mobile suit against the right wall, XXXG-01S Shenlong's newest incarnation, the XXXG-01S2 Altron Gundam, or, as the pilot declared fiercely, Nataku. Developed secretly, along with Deathsythe Hell, on OZ's Lunar Base by the five Gundam engineers, Nataku (Altron) was the premier for close-quarter combat suits. The immobile machine was like a sleeping dragon, majestic yet dangerous at repose. The mobile suit was immense; its immensity laid in the construction of its design and armor, for it bore the resemblance of a mythological dragon-like warrior.

Altron's beauty, its radiant and noble colors portrayed an elegance of nobility and regality. Power; Altron invoked power and its colors did well to highlight its quiet fury. The colors of the machine embodied the Earth's natural environment - vibrant dark green forests, the climbing green moss up long brown trees, and the whitest clouds of the sky. Most of the suit's body – the shoulders, back, side skirts, Dragon Fangs on its forearms, chin, and side head horns - had a dark forest green color scheme; moss green painted the front skirt and the chest; white colored the legs, the pockets of the shoulders, the stabilizer wings on its back and the rear, miniature wings on its Dragon Fangs, and the scaly head. Red coated the sectional blocks of the Dragon Fangs and its bloody fangs when opened, and the central chest vent; and gold trim outlined the chest, and highlighted the Dragon Fangs' mouths and its quadruple V-fin adorned above the head.

Originally, from what Trowa could recall, Shenlong contained a beam glaive, a beam trident, a Dragon fang mounted on its right shoulder, built in flamethrowers inside the fang for mid-range combat, a shield on its left forearm with an attached liaoya, and Vulcan guns on its head. Inside the shoulders and chest contained the program Fighting Spirit, a unique system, when activated, calculates the precise position, weak points, and movements of an enemy.

Altron's weaponry outclassed its former incarnation. On Altron's back, mounted on a turret, was a pair of beam cannons on its scorpion-like tail that rotated 180 degrees. Two Dragon Fangs instead of one, mounted on the forearms. The Dragon Fangs were extendable: they were attached to a set of foldable, highly maneuverable, sectional blocks which was then connected to the arms. This design allowed more flexibility when launched, and if destroyed, would not affect the arms. Moreover, the Fangs were as large as its body and could endure ballistic assaults as a shield. When launched, four miniature wings in the rear controlled the direction of the Dragon Fangs.

Inside the Dragon Fangs contained a nozzle for its flamethrowers for short-to-mid range attacks, which could melt the densest metals and armor like wax. Altron's last weapon, its main combat arsenal, was its twin beam trident. The twin beam trident was upgraded from Shenlong's glaive for more versatility and strength, to boost its offensive prowess when fighting multiple enemies. The pilot had mastered the suit, and its performance on the battlefield, when arriving to meet its foes, machine and human alike, were petrified by its ferocity.

However, on closer inspection, Trowa noticed the mobile suit had undergone a change. It wasn't subtle for the cold and metallic truth jutted from behind the suit on both sides, like a large and conspicuous gift hidden behind a smaller object. Usually, the retractable trident was situated under the verniers, however, as it was there, the emitters were gone, replaced by a metal cap. Further along, below the staff, were two, tempered Gundamium alloy, aggressively tapered blades peaking from behind the suit.

Trowa found it a strange choice. He knew the pilot relied on beam weapons because of their flexibility and malleability; he was able to accentuate different strikes to produce any desired offensive strike. The scorpion-like tail was removed, decreasing Altron's mid-range combat. His new equipment, in some ways, limited his attacks. He wondered idly why the pilot would make such a drastic choice. He limited his options – and that could mean certain death on the battlefield.

Trowa gazed across the ground and saw Duo's mobile suit, XXXG-01D2 Gundam Deathscythe Hell. It was one frightening piece of machinery. Lying on the floor, Deathscythe stared at him like a spawn from hell. If Heavyarms was the embodiment of total war, a machine worthy of demolishing entire bases single-handedly and annihilating battalions, then Deathscythe Hell was something drastically different. It had the appeal, the creeping darkness and the haunting of nightmares of legend: the Grim Reaper.

While Heavyarms was designed (and armed) with a surfeit of weaponry to tear the world asunder and leave it smoking, in ashes, Deathscyhthe Hell reaped its befallen opponents, appearing from the darkness, scythe raised in impending slaughter, cloak unfolded, revealing its skeletally-designed frame, rendering its foes paralyzed and drawing them into the eternal flames of hell. The machine belonged to the darkness, an entity of stealth and mass deception. Deathscythe lived and struck from the shadows. A personification of the death god, its long black bat-like wings shrouded the suit's skeletally-designed frame like the Reaper's cloak. Long jagged white spikes erupted from its kneecaps and shoulders, a protective defense for close combat.

The mobile suit was equipped with an active cloak, the product of Mercurius' planet defensors, where four field generators function as a defensive weapon against beam weaponry. The wings could repel beams and had an anti-beam coating. The Hyper Jammers were on the backpack, located on a nozzle, that when open, would release particles that could scramble and jam enemy radar and cameras.

Trowa could see why Deathscythe made such a formidable creature. The reconstructed and updated successor of XXXG-01D Gundam Deathscythe still held the creative touch of Professor G, the one of many eccentric engineers of Operation M's Gundams. Deathscyhthe Hell, truly, was a work of art. He still regretted destroying the original during the war, but Duo forgave him. He didn't hold grudges as long as he got even – and Duo always got even. Speaking of Duo, Trowa saw him enter the cargo bay, stopping at the ingress, looking up.

"Pretty neat, huh?" Duo remarked from below, his eyes bemused by Towa' rapt attention on his mobile suit. He jumped up, meeting Trowa in the air. To steady himself, Duo grabbed onto Trowa's left shoulder.

"Howard and I made some modifications to my buddy. We changed the double beam scythe to a double Gundanium scythe that's retractable; added another Gundanium component inside the buster shield, an extendable, heat-radiating blade, replacing the beam emitter, a chain for retracting the shield, and on the shields two miniature wings like on Wufei's Gundam would control the direction of the attack; and integrated a 90mm Gatling gun inside the right forearm. You could say we pulled a-Heero."

Duo was referencing the time where Heero Yuy customized Wing Zero by adding angel wings to his suit, to give it greater propulsion power, he had said simply. The Gundam pilots had been concerned, thinking Heero was preparing for a new war, but he was, apparently – Trowa had laughed loudly at his explanation, which was rarity for him – bored. Heero said he had too much time on his hands. He hadn't been so amused since he had asked Heero for advice on following his self-destructive example of blowing himself up.

"You went the same way that Wufei did his suit. Why did you replace the beam weaponry? The scythes' swings derive on the extension of the beam, especially with the booster?"

Duo chuckled, his eyes twinkling. "Wufei must've been copying me since I am a trendsetter. I can't help that I'm so popular these days."

Duo's pompous remark elicited a smile from Trowa. Arrogance ran in all the pilots' blood. Even Trowa was not immune to it, although, he could say he never let it rule him. "A scythe is used for reaping crops, but in the Grim Reaper's case," Duo said, "souls are reaped and harvested. In most western mythos, the Grim Reaper carried a metal scythe, so what better than to turn fiction into reality, the true God of Death incarnation. I wanted it to be as identical, a-near replica, of the God of Death. As for the beam weaponry, I'll just have to compensate on how well I swing the good ol' scythe. Not that I'm complaining, I'm pretty good with melee weapons.

"Also, man, Howard's new guy, Liam, was the one who added the new weapons!" Duo's expression turned sheepish and he looked down.

"What's the matter?"

Duo paused, sighed, and turned to Trowa. Trowa could feel Duo's nervousness. "You're not gonna like this, but Liam went a little overboard with the modifications."

Trowa narrowed his eyes and his lips thinned. "What did he do to Heavyarms?"

Duo gave a shaky laugh. "Well… um… I mean it wasn't my decision, yeah." Duo rubbed the back of his head, seemingly prolonging the moment. Trowa called his name.

Duo sighed once more and looked Trowa in the eyes. "Liam, he altered your Gatling Guns – I mean I tried to tell him to change it back but I - we were running late so..."

Trowa remained silent, but his silence, a cold and imposing force made Duo uncomfortable as he altered rubbing his hands from behind his head. Trowa crossed his arms and his head dipped down, a sign of Trowa's brooding and biting and sarcastic demeanor. Duo said hurriedly, "Liam changed your ammunition from beams shells to physical shells."

Trowa eyes morphed into fire. His anger was swift and it burned into Duo. How could have this happened? Was Liam a fool? Trowa's fingers tighten their grips on his biceps.

"Does he not realize that physical shells against Gundanium alloy, as I'm sure we'll be encountering suits composed of such material, are ineffectual? Did his calculations not apply to enemy mobile suits immune to physical ammunition like the Virgos?" Trowa spat harshly.

He was now at a disadvantage in combat. Beam weaponry in this age of combat was a necessity. Enemy mobile suits could withstand an onslaught of high caliber bullet shells but beams were the game changer. The only damage he could do would be to their joints and cameras, but even that was difficult in a free-roaming environment like space.

Duo placed his hands up in defense. "I know, I know, man. Even Howard ragged on him but we can't really change it, can we?"

Trowa uncrossed his arms. "I believe not. I'll have to make up for it with my missiles and Heavyarms's Gundanium knife and the new bazooka. I hadn't had to rely on physical shells since Operation M. I'd rather not engage in close quarter combat. It's not that I don't think I can win, quite the contrary; but I have far better aim. This will put me in a precarious position."

Trowa sighed. "By the way," he said, changing the conversation. The longer he mulled over Liam's incompetence the more his anger grew. Trowa needed another outlet and he knew where to begin.

"Your other surprises have definitely caught my attention. You didn't tell me Wufei would be here." Trowa titled his head up. "Knowing him, he usually has his own agenda."

Duo gave a helpless smile and shrugged. "I thought it would be nice since the White Fang mission. He was such a pessimist back then, man! All gloomy, ya know. I thought to myself, 'We're about to fight the bad guys, like always, and preserve this peace we fought so hard to attain. I bet this would cheer him up!' However, as of now, he's been more quiet and brooding than usual. I can't seem to figure the guy out."

"Remember Duo, acclimating to peace hasn't been so easy for everyone," said Trowa, resting his eyes, again, on Altron. He crossed his arms, feeling a sudden coldness wash over him, and it wasn't the chill from the room. The coldness, this sense of dread that ran through him, seemed to be emanating from Altron, as if her spirit was in great pain.

"Some of us can't live without such meaning. The war formed, trained and defined us, into weapons as our only possibility in life – nothing but that reality was possible for us. It was the only thing that we knew. Steel and blood. War and tragedy. We were the living vehicles spearheading revenge and peace for the Colonies. But we found something through the war for us to cherish, to return our humanity, and persevere in this new world. We re-found ourselves. I think Wufei hasn't come to terms with his new role in life yet – not like the rest us. Some scars continue to bleed. Untreated and left alone, it'll soon fester and consume your very actions. You'll start to manifest your infection in ways that are cumbersome to your personal growth."

"You're right." Duo frowned. "We fought like hell and still feel the war hovering over us. But we had a place to return to, friends and family. You don't think Wufei had anyone left?"

Trowa shook his head. He looked closer at Altron. The machine lay in somber resplendence as the dim bars of light traveled the length of the suit. The silence of the bay colluded with the light and shadows, and Altron bathed in their silent ache. The suit almost appeared to be crying where a bar of light lined down Altron's green eye. The scene made Trowa wonder, perplexed, by this phenomenon, of how a magnificent suit could bear so much weight.

Altron had always appeared menacing, holding a quiet majesty that commanded attention. From her lightning strikes and thundering presence to her radiance and tenacity within, in battle, Altron had carried her pilot's sense of justice as a powerful symbol of opposition and judge against his enemies. But looking on her now, looking at how solemn, how alone, captive in this cold and dim cargo bay, the suit lay vulnerable to a world where its purpose had been stalled, where its pilot had no use for her.

It was a saddening sight to see.

Is this the price of Relena's peace? Trowa wondered inwardly, facing the four Gundams, the heaviness of the room pressing down on him. If it was, then the price came at a cost to the pilots, for the Gundams were more than their representations of will, they were entities of wisdom, wells of self-knowledge. But the price of such wisdom and knowledge came at their sanity and bodies, for they must be utilized, brutally and ruthlessly, for warfare.

"That's a question I can't answer. Only Wufei would know," responded Trowa after a moment of silent rumination.

"Like hell he would say as much," Duo scoffed. "Sometimes he's such a closed book. Heero's easier to read, and that in itself took a while to understand."

An agitated Duo once more raked a hand through his bangs and then down his face, moaning over the inequities that happen to a Gundam pilot's life. He brought his wrist to his face and his frown soon vanished like the morning as he checked the time on his watch. His blue eyes widened in alarm. "Damn!" he exclaimed, "Time's up. Let's get hell out of here."

The two made to the flight deck. Upon arrival a familiar strip of platinum blond caught Trowa's eye. Standing from his seat, the pilot of Sandrock, Quatre Raberba Winner, greeted them with a warm smile. Quatre was a very slender youth, whose almost fragile appearance belied a determination and strength stronger than the world, which manifested in his startling blue eyes that sparkled like water touched by the sun, and an incredible stamina to survive. They were eyes that endured the greatest hardships but chose, when he could have surrendered to despair and anger, to give empathy and kindness. A vision Quatre was trying, in this new world, to make reality.

He still bore a boyish and soft visage; his ovular face was changing, maturing, and shedding his youth. His platinum bangs remained windswept yet longer, dangling in front of his eyes. He wore a lavender shemagh-styled keffiyeh draped over his shoulders as a scarf, a light blue shirt, brown pants and sandals. Compared to Duo and Trowa, Quatre looked the most out of place on the ship, or more suited for a desert environment, than the dangerous mission they were about to embark.

"Trowa! It's been too long." His smile that invited warmth became sad. "But I'm sorry we have to meet again under these circumstances. It seems the peace we fought so hard to achieve is about to be broken. The power we were given, it seems, couldn't prevent such an imminent threat. I wish that we – that I - foresaw -"

"There you go wishing!" interjected Duo. "Quatre, we didn't know! You shouldn't blame yourself. The Old Man was up to his no good tricks." Duo cocked his head at Trowa. "You should have seen him earlier! My word, this guy was a complete mess!"

"Duo, now you're exaggerating," Quatre argued. Duo chuckled in response and shrugged. Duo's cobalt blue eyes sparkled jocularly. Duo knew when to tease and have fun and when to, in severe moments, be serious. Right now, Duo looked in the mood for teasing.

"He's right, Quatre," agreed Trowa, "there's no point in worrying about or changing the past. The present matters most. It's where we can make the difference."

Quatre nodded, though still looking discouraged. "Duo, Trowa, you're right. However, I still can't help but feel the way I do. We bear some responsibility."

"Of course we are right, pal." Duo slung an arm over Quatre's shoulders. "Now, let's get on our way! I don't wanna be behind schedule."

"If you weren't lacking in awareness before, I wonder how in the world you weren't annihilated on the battlefield then, with your too carefree attitude. Your dawdling on this important mission is costly not only to us, but to the Colonies as well," spoke a familiar and acerbic voice.

"What?" Duo said, cocking his head to the side, his eyes trained on the seat where the voice spoke.

Sitting in a back seat behind the pilot chair, a pair of astute and scrutinizing dark eyes greeted them. The brown eyes were black as obsidian and seemed to peer through them with burning intensity. The eyes swallowed them, searching and drawing conclusions.

Chang Wufei didn't move from his chair. He titled his head imperceptibly but remained seated, arms crossed, face expressionless. Wufei looked more or less the same to Trowa: his black hair was slicked back severely into a ponytail that reached past the nape of his neck, his skin was pale yellow, his ovular face had become thinner and sharper, and he was dressed in a black spacesuit. Wufei's dark eyes found their new target: Trowa.

A moment of silence past only accompanied with the incessant beeps of the ship's interface. Trowa wasn't fazed by Wufei's subtle challenge; he held his stare. Wufei's dark eyes remained latched on to Trowa's, appraising his readiness, his devotion to the mission, and seemingly finding what he sought, then, sharply, shifted his focus to Duo's, who made a face, raising a thin eyebrow in wariness.

"Yeesh. Thank you for shaming my character, Wufei, but I am only human. I ain't like you and your whatever the Kung Fu training you had on Colony A202. Give me a break."

"Talk about a warm greeting," Duo murmured in Trowa's ear. "I offered him a chance to come along but he wanted to sulk by his lonesome on this depressing flight deck. I guess Quatre's company couldn't warm his cold heart. The guy needs to relax some more. Ya hear that?" Duo said the last words louder, aimed at the unperturbed Wufei.

Trowa smiled in response. Wufei's cool greeting was as warm as ever. He took the seat left of the pilot's chair.

"Now let's get on our way! I don't wanna be behind schedule. Tally-Ho!"

"You already are," Wufei said bluntly. "Now shut up and get going." Duo rolled his eyes, sighing, while giving Wufei annoyed glances. Wufei ignored him, choosing to close his eyes to ward off all of Duo's facial slights while Quatre settled down in the back, chuckling behind his hand.

The pilots settled in their seats, buckling their seatbelts, and jetted from the colony. Space's ubiquitous eyes, the stars, watched them from afar, twinkling in the darkness. The ship, for a while, made its way through L-3 to the L-2 colonies, without any hindrances, in relative silence. Morpheus came, and Trowa fell into a deep sleep.

The hours past and Trowa awoke from his slumber. Opening his green eyes, his ponderous gaze bore into space, his bleary mind trying to find answers within its vastness; a vastness that eluded the Gundam pilot, for space as large as it was, was still an anomaly. No one knew what space represented in its ethereal anonymity, except those that survived in its large body, and even that was lost in the cosmic vacuum.

Many in the Earth's Sphere, in the initial race to space, to construct resource satellites and colonies, thought space represented progress, as Earth became consumed and overpopulated by humans, seeking to extract and conquer all its resources and minerals, its beauty, and consequently, their own souls, for a modicum of power.

It was this incoherence, trapped by a state of war and violence, violence – also as a means of escape – led to the progression of the space colonies, a safe haven from the Earth's natural disasters and oversaturation and reliance on Earth's natural resources. Peace, which had eluded the Earth, as the UESA came into power, became near certainty, when the venerated politician, Heero Yuy, took his mass wave of pacifism and ignited a revolution of demilitarization. The Alliance and OZ abjured that notion. Weapons were their means of control, and subjugation and colonization was their law. And Trowa knew the bounds the Alliance and OZ would go to maintain their domineering presence over the colonies: they would simply exceed them to justify their control.

In a proclamation to the world, OZ had nefariously and clandestinely planned and executed the assassination of Heero Yuy in After Colony 185, blaming Yuy's death on some lone, deranged gunman. No one knew the gunman; he had no name or face, but when the authorities caught him, he had mysteriously disappeared in police custody. However, the colony denizens were not fooled. Most did not buy in to the Alliance's and OZ's propaganda, and a minute few plotted revenge.

Space became oppressed and an enduring movement of rebellion fermented inside grassroots organizations. Trowa had joined those grassroots movements and became embroiled in the affairs of the oppressed space colonies. Like so many before him, he had taken a liking for space and its denizens and without a home, for he a mere vagabond scouring the beleaguered streets for jobs, assimilated flawlessly into spacenoid society. Trowa had taken up the cause of spacenoid independence and enmeshed himself in the war.

War became the foundation; war with humans; and war against humans, using mobile dolls to ensure conquest.

Looking out the flight deck window, streams of wreckage and detritus would past by them in silence. It was common these days to pass wreckage from previous battles, the more frequent they appeared, and the more concerned Trowa grew. It seemed to stir something within the boy, something awful and something odious. The wreckage came like a warning from a past era that seemed to haunt Trowa.

A mobile doll head of an OZ-02MD Virgo came into view, the purple camera cracked, staring expressionlessly in a heavy silence - weighed by OZ's conquest of space, followed by the Artemis Revolution, leading to the White Fang and the Eve's War; the bane of the Gundam pilots and the pride of the mad scientist, Tubarov - judging, dimly, where this new era was headed. Would there be more arms and dolls, the price of human folly and corruption, the lure for their own dark volition? it seemed to ask mockingly. As the ship moved away, leaving the Virgo head in the void, its form becoming indistinguishable from space, the head's stare became hostile and accusing, and it seemed to carry a promise, a silent whisper of things to come.

"The remains of an old age… War seems to follow us around too often. There's not enough kindness and love to hold the world together and sustain it. It's only held by a few that keep the world from disarray. But those few, as strong as they are, can only endure so much before they're crushed by madness and hatred," Trowa heard Quatre whisper.

Quatre was staring at the stars too, his light blue eyes reflecting the myriad of stars from the window. The stars and his eyes, as if interconnected, appeared dim and somber. Trowa agreed inwardly. War was the immutable stain that could never be scrubbed away, no matter how lighter the world became, it remained, strikingly persistent and ugly.

He then moved his eyes onto Duo. He was in repose in his seat - his eyes closed, a placid smile playing on his lips, and his wild bangs finally free from the confines of his cap, touching his skin, and his hands tucked behind his head. The ship was on autopilot giving a reprieve to Duo, whom was relaxing and as he said earlier, Kicking it!

Duo found comfort in outer space; he was a child of it – from the war and freedom to its pacifistic stances – and he was easygoing, like most colonists. Trowa was sure the pre-war era, under the UESA, had formed him, too, but, conversely, instead of bitterness, he carried a great sense of humor however dark at times in the heat of battle. Duo had his moments, when his friendly disposition, at times, would slip, revealing with striking clarity and perception, a human and earnest perspective uncharacteristic of his nature. It was odd, for the gregarious youth's seriousness contrasted greatly with the surface personality presented to the Gundam pilots and everyone else.

Duo Maxwell was more than he appeared. More often than not one shows the surface because if one looks too deeply at the layered heart, the complexity and the reality become visceral, exposing the shielded vulnerability and raw emotions withheld and locked away from prying eyes that could cause, inadvertently, more hurt. What had Duo locked away in his heart was something only Duo knew, and Duo rarely said anything about it. Trowa wondered what kind of past Duo endured in his childhood. He had a suspicion Duo's had a similar beginnings. It was the type of knowledge Trowa had observed from his actions. Duo rarely talked about his past – he wasn't alone in that matter – but he and Trowa shared a love and admiration for outer space and its people. Shared goals and wishes for the betterment of spacenoids brought them together, and were bringing them to another conflict.

"Why is the Barton Foundation finally making their move now?" Trowa started suddenly, returning his view to the stars. The thought had been bothering him since he had received Duo's message.

Duo's placid smile disintegrated into a frown. He opened a cobalt blue eye, turning it on Trowa. "For starters, it's always nothin' good. I've got intelligence from the Sweepers. Dekim's been in development these last few months. He's been sending out mass calls for soldiers from OZ and the White Fang and any colonists' disappointed with the new world government. It's the calling for another revolution!"

Duo paused, and shook his head, crossing his arms, as if disbelieving the imminent reality of such an event. It could only lead to catastrophe and self-destruction. "What I can't understand is why people wanna start another war? We achieved peace for space and Earth – that should have been enough! We defeated the bad guys, didn't we? Didn't that mean something – anything! - to them? Those damn fools! They're starting uprisings in space – and the Colonies, and the Earth won't be prepared for such an attack. I guess those with power can never, truly, let go of it. They always wanna cause trouble for the rest of us. We left ourselves wide open this time. The damn devil's luck for these fools, eh?"

"Was peace really attained," spoke Wufei, his tone cynical, "if it can be broken so easily." He leaned his head against the side windows, gazing into space. His dark eyes seemed to flash in anger. Wufei's question elicited a visible reaction from his fellow pilots. Trowa shifted his green eyes on Wufei.

Wufei had a point. The growing ambivalence to the ESUN's rule and the purposeless soldiers who flocked to another fight, to find their place once more in the world, could not be discounted. There was a restlessness he felt from veteran soldiers whom he passed in the Colonies, a quiet fury for purpose. He could not deny that even he himself was facing an inner conflict that revolved around fighting and his search for existence post-war.

"You don't think so?" Duo asked, his tone incredulous, as he rounded on Wufei. "Come on, Wufei, look where we're at?! Look at us! The Colonies! When was the last time you saw kids like us celebrating in the streets without the threat of force?"

"Duo has a point, Wufei," Quatre chimed. "Overall, the colony denizens want peace. It's the soldiers who can't stop."

Wufei closed his eyes. "Should they be allowed to stop when they're discarded like trash for this new era? You should ask Dekim and the soldiers aligning with him that type of question, Duo. An air of uncertainty, like I said on that abandoned L-3 colony, has finally reached threshold, and is swiftly becoming a gale. We're on the brink of war. If peace really has been achieved, this wouldn't – shouldn't have happened."

"I see." Trowa nodded, thinking, then, "The soldiers, now, have nowhere to go after the complete dissolution of armaments. Dekim's promising them a new battlefield. This allure will ignite their discontent of the ESUN's policies."

Something struck Trowa's mind. He started connecting the dots. "This isn't an isolated event. He must have organized this immediately after Operation M's failure as a contingency. This cannot be overlooked as a mere resurgence in power. His power has never wavered; he was simply bidding his time, disseminating new orders from the shadows, to capitalize on an unaware populace."

"Now that's a scary thought," Duo said, whistling. His blue eyes had become darker. "He still wants to massacre the Earth."

"Dekim was never one to do things halfheartedly. The Gundam engineers were right in dissuading us from the ramifications of the original Operation M," added Quatre. He shifted in his seat, and turned his gaze on Duo, his face earnest. "I could never live with myself if I allowed the original Operation Meteor to go unchallenged. I don't think it's what all five us wanted – which is why we rebelled in the first place. None of our hearts could take such a blow. Killing billions?! for independence? We took on the burdens of the Colonies ourselves so they wouldn't have to dirty their hands. We bore the brunt of their hate."

Duo snorted. "I couldn't sit on my ass and watch Dekim genocide a billion people, and us, sweep in as the heroes and subjugate the people! I would never use my buddy for such dastardly methods! To be a tool for mass-murder?! I'm more willing to kill myself than become a mass-murdering hero."

Duo said the last bit lowly, but the three pilots understood the despicableness of the situation. Trowa agreed, as he too deviated from the original plan. Bringing untold pain on billions was not something he could tolerate or endorse. He wanted no part in the original operation. He had said as much to Doktor S when Heavyarms had become his responsibility after Barton's assassination. Trowa may have had considered himself a tool of war, but the destruction of a people for revenge, surmounted and broke through his ruthlessness. He deplored killing innocents. Those who plotted against the colonies' independence were the ones that needed to be eradicated completely, not innocent bystanders.

"We should have known Dekim never trusted the engineers, since we were so scattered," Duo went on. "Just look at Quinze! I bet you anything Quinze and the White Fang were the first contingency plan after our deviation from Operation M. This makes sense for Dekim's recruitment of former OZ and White Fang soldiers. Operation Meteor meant more to him, on a mass casualty scale, than freedom from the UESA and OZ. So much for following Heero Yuy's ideals of total pacifism and peace for the colonies! What a load of bullshit."

A pregnant silence came, and it unnerved the pilots as it gnawed at a past returning to the present. Duo continued. "You got my emails from the Sweeper and Preventer intelligence, Trowa?" Trowa nodded.

"Dekim's operations are everywhere – from all Lagrange points to Mars. The Preventers are spread thin, and we're tryin' to prevent his plans from gainin' momentum. It's tough work, man. I'm feeling all the pre-Operation M stress again." Duo shook his head wearily.

"I've sent the Maganac Corps to support the Preventer forces. The situation has become direr than I expected," Quatre said. He gripped his seat's arms. It was the only thing he could do to contain himself from standing up. "Rashid has taken control of his division and is searching in the L-5 colonies. Abdul, Ahmad, Auda are in command of their own and are investigating the L-2, L-3, L-4, respectively. I trust Heero, Ms. Sally and Ms. Noin, are searching in their areas, as well."

"This should have triggered a large commotion over the media," Trowa said. "Why hasn't it? This is explosive news, and I'm sure, somehow, it should have reached the public by now, with communications now open between the Colonies."

"Une and Noin have kept a media blackout; they're afraid of the repercussions if we don't stop 'em in time," said Duo, "The leaks could cause hysteria."

Duo's mouth twitched and Trowa noted how worried his comrade was about this situation. His blue eyes had lost their usual mirth and twinkle. Duo was frustrated and his frustration stemmed from his helplessness. The world was changing, and war, which seemed so distant almost a year ago, was becoming louder and louder, a driving force spurned on by the discontent of a few. It would soon reach their doorstep. Luckily, it hadn't arrived yet, but Trowa knew time was dwindling. They needed to silence those cries of war before they became emboldened, public proclamations.

"Fear of panic," Trowa said, crossing his arms.

Duo nodded. "Yeah. We're trying to foil this before it becomes a gigantic mess, and we end up in war. A war that Earth and especially the Colonies don't need!" He clenched his fists, his face set in determination.

"We can't let all that we've worked we created until now vanish, caused by those fools and their games. It would be a damn shame. We gotta squash their little rebellious plans. We have a peace to preserve."

"This sounds like an obvious diversion. Mars…? It's too far," Trowa speculated, frowning. Mars was about 85.48 million miles from Earth, at such a distance, it seemed inconceivable to setup operations. It felt like they were walking towards a grave trap.

"I agree. This is obviously a trap," said Wufei. He opened his dark eyes once more and narrowed them into slits, as if to watch the stars in suspicion. The stars merely sparkled back, neither hiding the truth nor giving him an answer. "What we might find could be important, could be the evidence that we need, however, it could also deceive us. If a man dreams it, surely, he'll get what his heart's desire. It also applies to odious men like Dekim. Self-indulgent ambition is a dangerous weapon. And we know that's the one thing Dekim never lacks."

"This would be a perfect chance for him to go unnoticed," Duo reasoned, turning his body to Wufei. "Nobody would think of such a faraway target. It would give him leeway to conduct any mass-scale operation without threat of interruption. He gotta hide his cards somehow, dontcha think?"

"If by chance that your inference is wrong, this would provide an opportunity to segregate the Gundams and all Preventer agents away from the Earth – leaving it conquerable. This is a big gambit Dekim's betting on – and you," Trowa said, giving Duo a pointed look.

Assumptions lead to mistakes and those mistakes could prove devastating if they were wrong, thought Trowa. He could envision in his mind's eye Heero's cool and accusing and penetrating glare at forming assumptions before the truth was verified in cold, undisputable evidence. Indeed Trowa also knew that from personal experience with a distraught Quatre, an encounter he was fortunate to survive with all his limbs intact. Assumptions lacked weight and were at risk, at bottom, to take off past reality. Trowa figured he would rather be tied down by evidence he could ascertain and work with than pure speculation.

"Yeah, I agree," Duo responded, "but we can't overestimate his forces. This is Dekim Barton we're talkin' 'bout – the man whose orders conditioned us into the very soldiers we are today. I wouldn't put it past his ol', gnarled, fingers to do somethin' as bold as this. The spiteful Old Man."

"I was in the same boat as you were in Trowa," admitted Quatre, "until Duo showed me some reports. Initially, I rejected this offer. Mars, strategically, wouldn't be a threat to us as it was out of range, and the Foundation was still in their initial development. However, if we could sever the head off the beast first, then we could suppress and eliminate other key components. He's still in the preparatory stages, according to the report."

"Anyway, a Sweeper report indicated large amounts of neo-titanium had been transported via ship on route to Mars, just a few days ago," Duo remarked. He leaned forward and the ceiling light caught his determined blue eyes, making them glint. "Report checks out. I've seen the evidence. We also sent a reconnaissance satellite to Mars to observe the Old Man's movements after the initial report from a Preventer agent. Bases at Lagrange points were transporting and in trade to Mars. By the time we had enough information, the recon satellite was destroyed by somethin'. Dekim is building somethin' – we're all sure about that. What he's building is a mystery. Good thing we know he has a resource satellite functioning as a factory with how much neo-titanium he's transporting."

"That's why we're going to take the Mars route, to uncover it?" Trowa asked, returning his eyes to space.

"Yep! We need strike while the iron is hot. Hopefully, he doesn't know that we fully caught on. We're hoping to squash this rebellion before it's too late," Duo said, a confident smile on his face.

Trowa simply blinked slowly, taking in the information. "I understand."

Trowa did understand. Attacking enemies while at their preliminary stages would counter and halt their movement. However, a thought troubled him – their forces would be stretched thin, including the Gundam pilots; and if it was a trap, Dekim could capitalize on their separation. It was a startling conundrum that seemed to fester the more they grew closer to their destination.

Three weeks of travel had passed in solitude only space was known for: a startling quietness that stemmed from nothing and everything, sometimes in the background, sometimes in the foreground, like an invisible presence. It remained. Unchanged. Eternal. The stars observed them; their palpitating beats, the winks in the distance, which stretched on for eternity, were the four Gundam pilots' only comforts.

However, for Trowa, having Duo, Quatre, and Wufei as companions made time short, and, if he was honest with himself, the jovial and friendly Gundam pilots eased his feelings of loneliness. Wufei's mostly silent companionship was appreciated. He may have not said much, but his presence made the voyage interesting. They had spent the time talking, strategizing, and playing chess – many games of chess, where Trowa had come close to first. Quatre had beaten his fellows by a small margin. Quatre was a tough opponent; his strategies were more thought-out than Duo's. Quatre was a logical thinker, knowing every piece on the chessboard and their functions, and he would employ and maximize their efficiency to capture a win. Every move carried a plan to checkmate him.

Duo, like his Gundam, was evasive and his moves unconventional. At times predicting him and his uncanny abilities was like sifting through a haystack blindly, looking for the needle that always evaded reach. If one was not careful the innocuous task could become injurious when the needle, after prolonged searching, finally reveals itself, and pierces the skin.

Wufei was fire, an offensive battle strategist that demanded Trowa answer to his sharp and bold moves. Wufei asserted offensive dominance. His offense was his defense, and even his defense burned. Trowa had to meet Wufei's fiery boldness with cunning and shrewdness – but, many times, in his counterstrikes, Wufei saw through his plans and vice versa, when Trowa would entrap the stubborn pilot into a corner, and that also proved dangerous, for caging Wufei was like tempting a powerful beast into unpredictability. A cornered beast sought to change its fate in any way that it can, even if that meant death.

Finally, the quad arrived at the red planet. It was now mid-November, After Colony 196.

"There it is! Our little red jewel," Duo said, leaning towards the flight deck window from his seat. "Looks a whole lot better seeing it in real life than in pictures, eh?"

The ship's sensors alerted the group to the satellite. Trowa zoomed in on the monitors, spotting the space station. Trowa had piloted the last duration of their voyage; Duo took the first, Quatre the second.

The screen revealed a small resource satellite floating in Mars's orbit. It had a coarse and rocky outer layer the color of deep grey stone. Its rocky topography was full of scars and large craters as if the asteroid was used as a testbed for a battlefield. Some scars looked new, and some were caked in black burns, scorched across its surface.

The opening act begins as the curtain rises. Let's see how the actors perform.

They drifted closer to the planet. He powered down the ship's engines, knowing at a certain range, the enemy would detect them on their radar.

"This should be a good place to stop," informed Trowa to the rest.

"We should have the element of surprise for the time being," Quatre said, smiling.

Wufei stood and headed out the flight deck doors. The remaining trio returned looks of knowing. Wufei never wasted a moment. He was a man of action.

"Looks like someone's eager. Good. Let's suit up, fellas. We can't let Wufei have all the fun now, can we? I'm pretty sure the Barton Foundation has a basket of treats waiting for us. No need for Wufei to hog them all for himself and leave us out in the cold," Duo said with a smile and wink, patting Trowa's shoulder as he stood. He took the lead to the cargo bay.

Trowa made his way to Heavyarms, donning his black space suit and carrying his helmet underarm. He entered Heavyarms's cockpit. He saw Duo enter Deathscythe Hell from the corner of his eye and Altron's cockpit close. Quatre dashed to Sandrock. He stowed his helmet into a compartment behind the overhead monitor.

Sitting against his seat, completely enveloped in darkness, relief flooded Trowa. The pilot had returned to his first home. Trowa's finger's glided effortlessly over the keyboard, awakening Heavyarms from its slumber, like a musician who had returned to playing her instrument after a long break – the mind and the body never forgets; they simply lead by instinct. The monitors, all six – one in the middle, two on Trowa's right and left side, and one above his head – flashed on. Trowa had during the trip reconfigured other cameras, optically, to replace the covered right eye. It may have not aligned with the other head camera by a few feet, but it would have to do. The lights of his interface beeped around him, the familiar beeping that gave him comfort; that used to be an arrhythmic lullaby that would lull him to sleep when he fought the world.

Heavyarms's green eyes pulsated with power, and the mobile suit stood, followed by Deathscythe Hell, Altron, and Sandrock. He then proceeded to open the cargo bay doors and using Heavyarms's right index finger, pressed the right side of the touchpad. The doors opened to an expanse of awaiting stars. Trowa buckled his seatbelt and pressed the acceleration pedals into space, steering his suit towards the station.

A strange feeling stirred within him as they neared the station. Their presence should have alerted the ship operators (though Gundanium wasn't detected on radar, their suits' heat sources should have been detected, knowing Dekim had intelligence on Gundanium alloy's properties), but there was no signal. In fact, nothing greeted them. No reaction or response. Using his infrared scanners, he scanned the orbital station… and then eyed it warily, his green eyes narrowing.

Damn. We were fooled. The scan did not detect any lifeforms.

"Were we too late, or was this a ruse?" Trowa asked. If it was a ruse, and they had fallen into Dekim's trap. The trap had been well orchestrated: four Gundam pilots were out of the way.

An image of Duo appeared on his main monitor. The young man's face was stony. He had probably come to the same conclusion.

"I don't detect any readings of heat sources nor sentient life on the station. It's like it's deserted…" Duo trailed off, his serious face turning contemplative.

Quatre's face appeared on his left monitor. He had on his goggles. "Which probably means this was a trap," he said dejectedly.

Wufei's face appeared on his right monitor. "We were lured by the false scent of blood." He smirked, as if amused by the precarious situation. He turned to Duo. "You were wrong. Still, -"

"You just gotta rub it in, dontcha, buddy?" Duo murmured.

"- we shouldn't leave just yet. We need all the information we can get. The facility should be of some use."

"Exactly!" Quatre agreed. "The satellite should have their coordinates of their whereabouts, if they haven't already deleted them. Any evidence is important. Anything that we can throw against Dekim would be beneficial in the long-run."

Duo, Trowa, and Wufei agreed and they jetted towards the station.

The pilots rounded the station on the planet's side, seeing an open hangar at the bottom of the asteroid. As they neared, Trowa's main monitor alerted him, flashing red frantically. His systems were detecting rising temperatures within the asteroid! The temperature increased drastically to extreme proportions, and started raging on the rock as fire hurled from the hangar. Blazing ropes sprouted from the asteroid, cracking the surface, spiraling and intertwining and then fading out into burning embers. Fire blazed as explosions erupted in multitudes, engulfing the station like fireworks.

"What the hell?!" Duo yelled, distancing his suit from the fiery wreckage.

"It was a trap! They were waiting for us!" Trowa called in consternation. They were lured here, and now, all evidence was incinerated. Quatre voiced the same, looking on worriedly at the destruction of the satellite.

"Damn the Barton Foundation to hell!" Duo cursed as Deathscythe soared upward, still watching the station alight in fire.

In one final flash that brightened and flooded Trowa's monitors, the base detonated. Trowa put his hands up to shield his face from the blinding light. When the light dimmed, all that was left of the base was molten detritus that floated mockingly at their loss chance.

"Is everyone all right?" Quatre said. Sandrock was to his right.

"Whoo! That was a close one!" exclaimed Duo. "One second too late and that could have been us. What horrible timing, ya know. I'm good, Quatre, just pissed. How underhanded could a man get?"

"We should hurry up and leave," Wufei urged. "The more time spent here, the more time the Colonies turn to madness and war."

"Definitely," Trowa agreed. He gave a small sympathetic smile to Duo, knowing the boy would be troubled leaving empty-handed. "Unfortunately, our basket of treats remains empty."

"You're telling m—!" Duo was cut off as a yellow beam hit Deathscythe's cloak. The beam splashed against the cloak harmlessly and dispersed into evanescent yellow particles.

He detected a sudden heat source on his right! Heavyarms dodged the beam, pulling up just to see twelve blue streaks soar around him, agile like quick canvas strikes, swishing and flicking at a moment's turn, trailing tails of blue fire. He zoomed in on them noting their features that looked, remarkably, like Virgo IIs. They were of a sleeker design, turquoise, with trim of red along the undersides of the chests, bottom feet, and head frames. In their right hands, gray mega beam cannons were integrated at the elbow, and were aimed at them! The head was a curved cone; its rectangular purple camera glowed odiously, and the shoulders, just like its predecessor, were overly large, and held one circular disc -Planet Defensors -its electromagnetic shields.

Trowa theorized that having only two Planets Defensors must have made it arguably stronger. The Virgo IIs had eight Planet Defensors for defense compared to this new successor. If these new models, Virgo IIIs, he aptly named, had the same weaknesses as the older models, then repeated attacks decreased the strength of their shields. Close combat, also, proved effective, for the mobile dolls lacked originality and could not compute data fast enough at close proximity. He would need to make sure his hits counted; he didn't have infinite bullets and missiles or a supply ship to replenish his arms.

However, if the Virgo IIIs had the same strengths, if not greater than their predecessor, then he would need to rely on his piloting skills and Heavyarms's speed. Heavyarms, like any mobile suit constructed of Gundanium, was durable against beam weaponry. Repeated attacks wore down Gundanium, and higher power settings, for beams, especially from Virgos and Tauri could permanently damage or disintegrate Gundanium. Heavyarms's newest incarnation wasn't afforded the privilege of a shield or reinforced Gundanium plating. The mobile suit had sacrificed defense for an all-out offense.

"Virgos?" Duo shouted. His face turned apprehensive. "You're telling me Dekim has been making Virgos?! For the love of – damn it! And I thought he couldn't get lower."

Trowa watched the suits approach. They moved in mechanical unison that eerily reminded him of Dothory Catalonia's tactical approach of giving AI spirit, a more human character to a soulless machine. "Dekim has never been a man who would let resources go to waste. He takes all the advantages he can get."

"More attuned and customized versions. He's created more soulless machines that resemble his heart. Shows that he's been waiting for us," Wufei added. The thought of facing a tough opponent changed his dark expression to one of determination. Knowing Wufei, facing conflict head-on was his way to fight.

"Here they come!" shouted Wufei.

"Let's hurry this up!" urged Quatre.

"Then let's send them to where they belong – to hell!" Duo cried.

Trowa accelerated toward the first one and used Heavyarms's left Gatling gun to fire a storm of bullets. He knew the bullets wouldn't amount to much, but they would insure distance from his enemy. The machine reacted quicker than he expected, quicker than the Virgo IIs, and dodged in a gush of blue light. Trowa powered his engines as they surrounded him, firing yellow streaks of light. Heavyarms surged upward, the yellow beams hounding the Gundam, the light, briefly, reflecting off his suit as they missed. An alarm blared on his left screen alerted Trowa to an incoming machine at his nine.

The mobile doll barreled at Trowa, its cannon pumping dangerous yellow beams. Another alarm signal went off from his rear and to his front, as they tried to box him. Trowa, flipping a switch, brought Heavyarms's right Gatling gun into its right manipulator. He aimed and the Gatlings roared at the two on his right and in front, however, the shells impact was lessened by the mobile dolls' Planet Defensors, their magnetic defense rendering the shells useless. The three broke off, two banking to the left and one to the right, respectively. Trowa maneuvered Heavyarms down, dodging a yellow beam from his rear. He then opened Heavyarms's missile containers on its shoulders, unleashing a salvo at the one on his flank. Caught off guard, the missiles obliterated the machine.

Trowa saw in the distance Duo slice into one, bifurcating it at the waist. Duo wasted no time tackling the next one. His mobile suit was very capable for such battles. Deathscythe had a mechanism called Hyper Jammers that scrambled cameras and enemy radars. The mobile dolls were having a hard time calculating his movements when Duo engaged them in close-quarter combat.

Wufei was a white blur on the battlefield. He was an extension of his Gundam, and where he attacked, it was in an instant. Nataku's yinyuedao, when the retractable bow attached to a blade, stabbed into one Virgo's chest. He brought the weapon up, the blade slicing into the Virgo's body and through the head. He charged after two more in the distance, flashes of blue and yellow illuminating the black backdrop of space, as they clashed ferociously.

Quatre was moving closer, though, unfortunately for him, the dolls seemed to anticipate his moves, distancing themselves away from Sandrock's shotels. Then, coming to Quatre's aid, Duo cornered a mobile doll. The doll evaded his side swing, boosting upwards. Quatre closed off its exit, and slashed into the suit, destroying the frame. He barely had enough time to dodge a roaring yellow beam that came close to Sandrock's cockpit.

Duo jettisoned to the Virgo, raising Deathscythe's left arm up, its buster chain shield blasted from its forearm. The Gundanium blade appeared from the tip of the shield, driving with directed rage from the shield's two rear wings which were now erect, controlling the direction. The Virgo did not have time to dodge, and as a result, its chest was penetrated. Duo retracted the chain and the machine exploded.

Returning his attention to his enemies, Trowa needed a plan to diminish their numbers. He contacted Duo. "Duo, I'll lure them after me. Flank them," Trowa ordered.

"You got it," Duo returned. "You don't mind being on your own for a bit, Quatre?"

"Go and help Trowa. Fighting with bullets like his won't last. I'll be fine. Besides Wufei and I can finish these lasts one up by ourselves."

"Roger that, man!"

Trowa had no time to relax, barely missing another spam of yellow beams. Bzzz! they screamed together. He accelerated closer to the red planet, three Virgos relentlessly pursuing him – one from below, the other left of him, planet side, and one from above - firing consecutively a torrent of yellow beams.

He flew over the planet feeling the pull of Mars's gravity. The three followed after him twirling like spirals. He released Heavyarms's leg missiles in conjunction with his Gatling guns. One was caught in the onslaught and destroyed, while another's beam cannon exploded, and one increased its altitude, using its shield to endure the missiles and shells. The last two continued after him, the armless one grabbing him around its waist, and bringing him down to the planet's gravity.

Trowa used Heavyarms's machine cannons and mutilated the Virgo. He was caught off-guard when the last Virgo appeared before him, a pink beam saber in hand. It was too close for Trowa to fully dodge. As the saber neared Heavyarms's chest, the Virgos arms were sliced from the elbow up, and the double scythe cleaved it in two from the shoulder to the waist. Trowa's monitors glowed bright yellow and his cockpit shook from shockwave of the resulting explosion.

He breathed a sigh, gratefully looking upon the form of Deathscythe. "Thanks, Duo."

Duo chuckled. "Not a problem, buddy. Those machines were incredibly tactical. Dekim's using new strategic programs?"

"They weren't just tactical, their whole bodies were upgraded. I'm feeling a strange uneasiness."

"I feel it too, Trowa," Quatre said, congregating to them. Sandrock's shotels were now on its backpack. "This was preplanned. The mobile dolls had to have known we'd be approaching. They probably had timed programming or sensors that alerted them to incoming vessels. We were careless."

"This just –!" Duo let out an exasperated sigh. "Damn it! We were played!" He punched his hand. "And at the worst time."

"It goes to show how much he fears us." Wufei appeared with Altron. Its staff had retracted and was on its back skirt.

"We still have time. Let's get out of Mars's gravity, and then we can regroup and rendezvous with -!" Trowa paused suddenly, his mouth opening in a silent cry, watching a thick red light strike his machine. His monitors exploded with red light, flooding his cockpit. The light was blinding. He let out another cry and covered his eyes. His eyes burned and he could feel tears well. After a moment he opened his eyes. Black spots clamored in his vision, intermittently appearing then vanishing like blinking lights. When the spots had gone, he checked the cockpit.

Trowa was left in pitch blackness and a horrible silence of something that had gone terribly wrong. His monitors and operating system were off! And all too suddenly, he felt Heavyarms jerk and then the sensation of falling, as he was rammed against the back of his chair. Trowa panicked, trying to switch on Heavyarms but the system would not reboot! Fear rose in him as Heavyarms descended into Mars's atmosphere. The cockpit joggled him this way and that; the turbulent vibrations were like an earthquake as it rattled the cockpit, the pressure restricting him to the back of his seat. He gripped his controls wishing desperately for the machine to reactivate and grant him safety.

Catherine, Trowa thought bitterly. He couldn't keep his promise to her. He hoped she understood though, Trowa knew she wouldn't, and that made him feel all the worst. His death would break her heart. He could already see her in his mind's eye, inconsolable and her cries, cries that will wail into the night for years, piercing his heart. He closed his eyes, awaiting his end. Plummeting from such a height, he would surely die on impact. Instantly. The end would be as sudden as falling asleep.

"So this is the end," Trowa whispered to the darkness of his cockpit, his tone tinged in regret yet acknowledging his circumstance. He would always try until the end; and when the end came, when all futility ceased, he would resign himself to death's embrace. He looked into his cockpit where only darkness answered him. It would soon be his eternal coffin.

Quatre. Duo. Wufei. They would die with Trowa. All their dreams, the Earth's and the Colonies', disintegrated, forever and ever. At least, Trowa thought, he wouldn't die alone. A morbid thought, and yet, he was comforted by such thinking. It didn't make him less afraid, but Trowa gained an inevitable resolution.

However, miraculously, as if Heavyarms refused give up, the cockpit restarted and Trowa's screens blinked and shined into existence. His monitors, at once, displayed the wispy cirrus clouds of Mars's thin atmosphere.

Relief flooded him. He stared in awe at his monitors, and then smiled. "You continue to surprise me, Heavyarms. You're always telling me to never give up to the very end," Trowa remarked to the animated cockpit. "According to you, my time hasn't run out just yet."

He and his friends' impending deaths vanished from his mind. Clarity came. His body relaxed, and he focused on the outside world. Trowa realized he was falling through the clouds, into Mars's north-western hemisphere, to the surface of the rising red jagged mountain ridges ravaging the landscape of the Kaisei Valley and the opening of the Chyrse Planitea, and… civilization?

Trowa froze at the thought.

The thought had to be wrong! Civilization shouldn't be possible! He had studied space, the planets, had seen thousands of pictures of the red planet's barren surface. Life shouldn't have been possible, at least, as he knew, at this moment.

He knew neither the Earth nor the space colonies had started terraforming the planet yet. He suspected Vice Foreign Minister Darlian was in talks with the president of the ESUN, from what little tidbits he had gathered from Heero earlier in the year, of terraforming Mars for human habitation. A consensus however, had not been reached.

This was a startling development. His monitors showed urbanized cities and lights sparkling inside great, yawning canyons. It wasn't isolated – many lights were spread across the red crust, the product of industrialized cities utilizing electricity for energy. They burned like fires in the dark. Someone had created civilization, had tamed Mars's carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere, for human (or alien) habitation.

Trowa looked back into the sky. He was falling in what seemed to be the early hours, the sunlight cutting through nighttime sky like a sword, and dark tendrils of smoke rising from the ground, and the sparks of explosions painting the sky in ominous black clouds, the apparent signs of a battle. His alarm blared, and his monitors zeroed in on Deathscythe, Altron and Sandrock falling beside him.

Duo appeared on his monitors, a little frazzled than normal. He looked clearly taken aback but relieved nonetheless. Quatre also appeared relieved, his shoulders drooping from their heightened state of stress. The brief ordeal had nearly claimed their lives. Wufei came next, his mouth a thin line and his brows furrowed.

"Thank goodness!" Duo started brightly. "I thought I was gonna kick the bucket for good and be claimed by the Gods of Death. When my system turned off, I thought that was the end. Instead, the Gods of Death are just laughing at me again. What in the hell happened?!"

"I suspect it was solar flare," Wufei said. "The flare took out our systems. It seems like fate was conspiring to end us but our Gundams refused to play along."

A solar flare? Where had he heard that before? Surprise, briefly, shone in his eyes. The news anchor had reported of abnormal eruptions from the sun while he was at the Stardust hotel. Trowa silently cursed himself for his shortsightedness.

"What grimy luck we're having today," Duo moaned, and Trowa couldn't help but agree. Duo shook his head, a small smile gracing his lips, though, suddenly, it turned into a sober frown as he turned his attention to Mars. The familiar look of battle called to his face. "You see what I'm seeing down there?!"

Trowa nodded, Quatre wore a frown, and Wufei had a look of contemplation. A foreboding silence and tension, one of uncertainty, rose around them.

"What ya wanna do?" Duo watched his comrade's reactions, his eyebrow raised in question and his head cocked to the side.

The question was left hanging in the air. To touch it was to invite a dangerous and unneeded problem on their hands. However, to do nothing still invited the problem. Trowa didn't doubt amid whatever situation among the combatants, they would sense their approach. It was hard for one not to notice on their screens four mobile suits descending with the rise of the sun. The question he mulled over was their position when they interfered in the battle.

"With the rate were falling, Duo, collision into this confrontation is unavoidable," Trowa replied, deducing the velocity of their descent and the numerous machines waging destruction. "They've probably picked us on their sensors by now."

Wufei frowned. "If it comes to that, we'll put an end to their aggression. As amazed as I am, if they goad Nataku into fighting, or try to provoke a reaction, I'm not going sit by and watch."

"Really now? Unavoidable you say?" Duo looked at Trowa, his gaze clearly showing his disapproval – but he shrugged it away. "Well, whatever. We'll do what we have to and limit casualties if possible, though, judging by the destruction, that's gonna be impossible. I'm reading eight mobile suits below. I'll land behind the base, south of your position. I'm hoping they'll let us leave, but knowing our luck we're in for some trouble. Sheesh! One thing after another. I'm going to have to take another extended vacation after this. Maybe go to the moon. I think that will cancel my bad luck. What a nightmare!"

"Are we really going to do this? I know there's no avoiding the situation, Duo, Trowa and Wufei, but we shouldn't proceed into a direct confrontation unless provoked," Quatre argued. "This isn't our dispute."

"I agree, Quatre. If possible we should avoid violent disputes like these, but, as of right now, we're not that fortunate." A nightmare indeed, Trowa thought mockingly. Quatre's subtle scrunching of his cheeks revealed his reservation.

"They might suspect us, perhaps, as reinforcements or an outside force. We can't assume they'll let us go without asking some intrusive questions. Let's prepare for our descent. Ready yourself for combat and remember to recalculate and recalibrate your balancers and weapons for Mars's gravity," Trowa ordered.

Duo threw a smirk at him – and in the same motion Deathscythe waved – and flew past him. Deathscythe opened its cloak, and sprung its enormous bat-like wings, revealing the suits skeletally-designed frame. As Sandrock and Heavyarms continued to fall, Deathscythe remained in the sky; its engines were powerful enough to sustain atmospheric flight.

Wufei snorted, but seemed to acknowledge Trowa taking command, as of now. No one ordered Wufei unless the cause was beneficial to the destruction or defeat of his enemy. Quatre gave a heavy sigh. He moved Sandrock to Heavyarms's right.

Trowa adjusted Heavyarms, using its verniers to ease his velocity. Heavyarms's boosters rumbled to a start and he hovered. Compared to the other Gundams with flight equipment (Wing Zero and Deathscythe Hell and Altron) Heavyarms was meant for ground operations (and space once configured). Flight wasn't its specialty; it required modified aerial equipment for that necessity. The suit had great propulsion power however; its speed advantage was used for quick bursts to catch enemies off-guard.

Descending, he noticed three mobile suits lined up, firing, at a base atop a large red hill. Two more surrounded its east and west points, and another three its south point. The depictions of the mobile suits were of a make Trowa had never seen before. Their design slightly resembled a less robust OZ-06MS Leo suit, a more utilitarian and sleek model. He scanned the suits, seeing if a reference would be in Heavyarms's database. No such luck. He switched to the Search Eye sensors to analyze the machines where the cameras could not.

An outline of their frame popped open on his central monitor. They were 17.8 meters, a full meter over Heavyarms. Their frames were encased and protected in green, boxy armor. The suits had a trapezoid-like head that was rounded at the top, framing their yellow cubed cameras. From the head, the chest frame boldly and sharply protruded outward but was sleek as it transitioned to the pelvic region where two hydraulic cables extended outward, connecting the upper body to the lower body. A curved, metal, spinal column stabilized the body by connecting from the upper body to the pelvic. The suits had side skirts, the legs were covered in armor till it stopped at their heeled-feet. Retractable thrusters were located behind the calves.

The first two, on the frontline, carried an axe in their left manipulators and GR-W01 120mm rifles in their right, Heavyarms's identified, except the last one in the row, on the left. That suit held a rectangular shield its right forearm. The invading suits stood stock-still, awaiting the incoming Gundams' descent.

Heavyarms met the red ground with a bang, skidding across the surface and throwing up chunks of rocks and red dust. Sandrock came roaring from behind; Altron landed to Trowa's nine, facing a lone opponent; and Deathscythe settled behind the base, landing gently on the surface between the base and the three foreign mobile suits. The battle had stopped abruptly, the combatants looked baffled over the interference of four new mobile suits.

At the time of confusion, Trowa used his screen and zoomed in on the combatants. Besides the new mobile suits, behind him tank-like machines retreated up the hill to the base in a desperate attempt to flee the mobile suits. Traveling to the ridges on the far left, tanks in gleaming crimson were withdrawing from their positions. The ones climbing the hill had beige, robust, metal bodies with two wheeled-legs at the front and a third in the rear. They stood at 3.5 meters and contained either two eight-tube missile pods or 30mm machine guns on their flanks. Some tanks were a pile of smoldering refuse, spread across the red barren land.

Shirtless children that looked his age and even younger were atop the hill watching him and Quatre with wary expressions, their faces destitute of hope, some terrified – and this fright came from the unexpected: they were at a loss of what to do, beset by an overwhelming force sent to murder them on all fronts. They were at a loss of their course of action as four new combatants entered the fray. They worried whether the four Gundam suits were friend or foe, on a battlefield, that Trowa concluded, was not in their favor: burning and smoking detritus were strewn along the hill's ravaged and desiccated slopes, children exhausted from battle, bloody and dirty, looked upon them in awe and fear – for their fear could be justified if Trowa, Wufei and Duo became their enemies: They would be massacred. Quatre would be conflicted, and he would, in the end, resolve himself to exit the battlefield, if he could. He was too kind. However, forced into an inevitable fight Trowa was sure Quatre would defend himself most bravely.

Desperation spoke on the children's faces. They fought a losing battle against mechanical giants that could, with a swing of their axe, a stomp from their foot, or shot from their rifle, annihilate them in an instant. They were insignificant compared to the might of mobile suits, mere playthings for their amusement. Their statures were imposing when looking up as they towered over their small bodies like spires, their shadows enveloping the children as if death found new souls take in the oncoming onslaught.

Atop the hill, at the command base, a lone tank sat overlooking the battlefield, separated from its comrades a few meters below the crest. Above the tank's hatch, a young woman around his age surveyed the battlefield before her, her yellow eyes hard like steel. She was shirtless, revealing glistening brown skin, her breasts were bound in a black tank top, a red scarf snuggled against her neck, her spiky lilac hair was in a Mohawk that curled around her bare shoulders, and a long dangling bang curving like a fang hung over her eyes.

She yelled into her radio headset, looking between the base and to the four Gundams behind and in front of her. The youth's yellow eyes tightened in duress, sweat glistened from her brow, and a scowl that resembled a trapped beast spread across her face. Trowa turned the volume higher to hear the girl's voice.

"Biscuit! We need Mikazuki, now!" her rough voice commanded. "The odds seemed to be out of our favor and..." glancing quickly from front to back, she then glared at the four Gundams – "there are four new mobile suits here! It's twelve to one now."

She put her hand to her ear, looking between the combatants. Whatever she was hearing on the radio, her expression became more confused as her mouth slightly fell open. She then growled, "What do you mean you can't confirm them?! What? I see them here unless… they don't have Ahab reactors?! That should be impossible. No mobile suit can operate without Ahab waves and reactors! Damn it! We need Mikazuki! We can't die here! I won't die here!"

Duo popped on his screen, his expression darker than Trowa had seen in a while – darker than his God of Death persona. "You seein' what I'm seein'? Kids against an army; doesn't that bring back joyful memories?"

"Whether kids or not, is semantics. Right now they're soldiers defending their base. Is that a surprise?"

"Like hell it is. But does that make it okay for what you're seeing?" Duo brought his hands up, shrugging, a smile creeping on his face. It held no humor. In fact, it was more a ghost smile of something haunted, a memory, Trowa perceived, of something locked away, masked, like the many facades he and Heero wore.

"But can we really leave things like this," Quatre wondered worriedly, his voice echoing through his cockpit on an audio frequency. "I've might have misspoken if I didn't see who was on the battlefield. This isn't right... It's not."

Wufei hummed, his dark eyes transfixed on the battlefield. "It's total annihilation. This amount of force to suppress a lone base and these tanks… There's more to this than we thought. Something unjust is at hand."

"I guess I wasn't the only one who was thinking the same. No, Quatre, we can't. But this is fine by me. For old time's sake, let's show them what a Gundam can do. I really don't wanna regret this if things go south." Duo exited out.

The mobile suits, too, stopped their war to assess Trowa and his comrades. They brought their rifles to bear as a tremendous silence, bordering on anticipation and nerves, violence and catastrophe, struck the air. A steady wind came, sweeping red dust and smoke, and it howled in a fury. The suits withstood the wind, the furious howl, in predatory silence, waiting for the moment to escalate tension. The green mobile suits opened their heads, revealing spherical yellow sensors mounted inside, and then closed them with a snap.

"Long distance sensors?" Trowa murmured.

A conceited and grandiloquent male voice, swimming in condescension, echoed on the battlefield as if a noble had arrived among peasants, declaring his status to besmirch their own, from the speaker system of one of the mobile suits. The speaker's suit thrust its axe towards Heavyarms and Sandrock as if to precipitate a fight. This one bore a horn on its trapezoid head compared to the rest, and its undisguised contempt or disgust was blatantly obvious for all to see.

"Who are you to interrupt my beautiful battlefield?! Reinforcements? Interlopers? Reconnaissance did not report any mobile suit activity, yet. I'll be sure to stipend their pay. Incompetence, incompetence, incompetence!" the man said distastefully. "Even so," the voice chortled arrogantly, "four mobile suits are no threat to the likes of Gjallarhorn's military might."

A gruff and measured voice spoke next, from the mobile suit on the far left. "We should retreat, Commander Orliss, and regroup with the mobile worker divi–!"

"Silence! Lt. Crank, you are not in command of this operation. I will not have you commandeering my position. Commander Coral did not give you authority, did he now? You – all – will follow my directives! Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Commander Orliss," the man, Lt. Crank, capitulated grudgingly.

"Good. We'll attack!" he then laughed. "I'm going to destroy you and everything here! I'll make sure you remember my name in your last moments! Orliss Stenja, Gjallarhorn's commander, whom eradicated this filthy rebellion!"

In an explosive burst, the middle mobile suit charged towards Heavyarms, jumping, raising its axe and, like a guillotine slowly descending on its victim, thrusted it downward as a call rang out - "Commander Orliss, don't!"

Trowa opened Heavyarms's chest, revealing four Gatling guns, pressed the trigger, and drilled the machine, the bullets screaming into the suit. The sound was like thunder clapping when the bullets struck metal, a booming cacophony of clanking metal that pierced the air in thunderous pings. At first the bullets fazed off the machine, but as it came closer the suit's paint started chipping on its chest, exposing grey metal, and then large impact dents made way, freezing the suit in midair as if surprised it was affected by physical shells. Numerous rounds pounded the cockpit and chest and its left arm. Soon the axe and rifle tumbled out of its manipulators, the arms convulsed from the trauma inflicted from the pilot's spasms on the controls, and the right arm, hit in the exposed region between its metal coverings, tore the arm off. The mobile suit crashed to the ground, smoke rising from its perforated body.

Their armor was denser than Trowa expected. His concentrated bullets pierced the frame, ripping away its arm but most of the machine was still intact. Enormous dents and holes riddled the prone machine, removing some kind of paint that prevented physical ballistics at first. Whatever the suit was composed of, it knew how to take multiple hits until it was crippled. He would need to pierce their exposed joints for a better efficacious outcome.

"LT. ORLISS!" cried the men of Gjallarhorn.

"First division, I'm taking command! Zan, Tim, rendezvous with me and Ein. Ein, distance yourself!" Lt. Crank commanded, as the machines' spread out in a gust of speed, whipping up a cloud of red dust.

"No, I'm avenging Orliss! I'm taking them down!" a man called, driving his machine up the hill to the base.

"Zan!" shouted the enemy fighters.

As the mobile suit launched toward the tower, its axe glinting dangerously from the sun as it fell, the hill erupted! An explosion of red dust swirled around the base, and a massive shadow writhed inside as demonic green eyes glared through the dust storm.

A loud metal thud wrung in the air, like large pieces of metal hitting each other, screeching horribly. The attacking mobile suit was launched backwards, the cockpit smashed, blood gushing out from the cracks as it hit the Martian soil in a heap. The swirling dust dissipated, revealing a metal silhouette that made Trowa blanch.

"A Gundam," he said softly.

He had never thought he would arrive on Mars, but to see a Gundam, in front of his eyes, was groundbreaking. Trowa felt he was in some kind of alternate dimension. Humans on Mars? Oxygenated air? New mobile suits? And a Gundam? Nothing he knew, that he could decisively conclude, from all the knowledge he had accumulated over the years, made sense. Trowa was at a lost.

"And it doesn't look too friendly," Quatre's voice rang in his cockpit. Sandrock brought its heat shotels to bear, placing itself in front of Trowa defensively.

The machine turned its head toward Heavyarms and Sandrock, its green eyes flashing and burning, ominously. Its large golden overhanging crest bedazzled by the rising sun, hung like a heavy crown. The chest was painted in blue, gold trim on the chest vents followed by a mostly white scheme. It had the same appearance as the strange green mobile suits: it seemed, aesthetically wise, to have missing obliquus as two cables attached to the thin waist. The machine's pelvic was wide, its crotch surrounded by two short side skirts; the legs were thin, until it reached the knee caps, where it was shrouded in white armor, with red markings of a vertical red line inside a pentagon. The feet looked like heeled-paws, with two nails protruding on each foot. The shoulders were bare, displaying the machine's vulnerable exoskeleton; the left forearm had a blue bulky gauntlet; the right was white and plain. A white, large, thruster backpack was attached to its back.

The Gundam gripped a massive black mace with spiky tips. The mace was as large as its body and shined a lustrous black as it was held high above its head, blocking the newly awakened sun, yet the light illuminated the weapon, its outline glowing a dark red. The weapon called for blood, and the machine looked eager to answer its call.

"Mika!" the lilac-haired girl shouted over the base's speaker system, her eyes wide and astonished, but also relieved, seeing the Gundam decimate its enemy. "Never mind them! Focus your attention on Gjallarhorn!"

"Understood," answered a boy's soft voice. "Keep everyone back." The machine roared, its thrusters booming in an explosive burst, shot straight toward the retreating tank division, leaving a plume of red dust in its wake. Using its long mace like a golf club, the suit cleaved through the machines. The mace tore through the metal tanks, tearing them apart as fragments and bodies, with incredible force, took to the sky, then impacted Martian soil in loud crashes. The result was bloody smears staining the ground as if to mix with the red soil, an offering to Aries in attempt to please the war god, and ruined metal lay astray in newly half-hazard memorials, jutting in disarray.

"So you've not yet declared us an enemy," Trowa said thoughtfully. His alarm blared at incoming fire from the enemy suits. The bullets reflected off Gundanium harmlessly. Trowa brought his Gatling guns to bear and fired, the fusillades thundering at the roving green units.

"Let's pay them back for attacking, eh?" Wufei called, smirking in anticipation.

"I guess we have no choice in the matter. Let's do this, Trowa," Quatre called.

"Right, Quatre!"

The time of battle had commenced!

XXX

An: That's that. Expect sporadic updates, sometime in late November or earlier December. I've already made a significant dent in the second chapter and I like to make more headway in chapter three before I post again. See ya next time!